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ADDRESSES AND PAPERS 



ANDREW S. DRAPER, LL.B., LL.D, 
Commissioner of Education 



1907 



ALBANY, N. Y. 



>40im-O7-35os> (7-S7xo) 



New York 

Brooklyn 

Watkins 

Palmyra 

Buffalo 

Syracuse 

New York 

Albany 

New York 

New York 

Plattsburg 



STATE OF NEW YORK 

EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

Regent s of the University 

With years when, term? expire 

1913 Whitelaw Reid M-A. LL.D. Chancellor 

1917 St Clair McKei^way M.A. LL.D. Vice Chan- 

cellor , . V . . . r . . 

1908 Daniel Beach Ph.D. LL.D. . *, . . 
'.'■19.14 Pliny T. Sexton LL.B. LL.D, . 
1912 T. Guilford Smith M.A. CE. LL.D. 

1918 William Nottingham '.M.A. Ph.D. LL.D. 

1910 Charles A. Gardiner PIlD. L.H.D. LL.D. D.C.L. 

1915 Albert Vander Veer M;D, M.A, Ph.E>. LL.D. 

1911 Edward Lauterbach M.A. LL.D. . 

1909 Eugene A. J%ilbin LL.B. LL.D. . 

1916 Lugian L. Shedden LL.B. . , 

Commissioner of Education 

Andrew S. Draper LL:B. LL.D. 

Assistant Commissioners 

Howard J. Rogers M.A. LL.D. First Assistant 
Edward J. Goodwin Lit.D, L.H.D. Second Assistant 
Augustus S. Downing M.A. Pd.D. LL.D. Third Assistant 

Director of. State Library 

Edwin H. Anderson M.A. 

Director of Science and State Museum 

John M. Clarke Ph.D. LLJX 

Chiefs of Divisions 

Administration, Harlan H. Horner B.A. 

Attendance, James D. Sullivan 

Educational Extension, WiLliam R. Eastman M.A. ML. 

Examinations, Charles F. Wheelock B.S. LL.D. 

Inspections, Frank ti.Woop ;M.A. 

Law, Thomas E. Finegan M.A. 

School Libraries, Charles E< Fitch L.H.D. 

Statistics, Hiram C. Case 

Visual Instruction, DeLAncey M. Ellis 



New York State Education Department 



ADDRESSES AND PAPERS ^T 



ANDREW S. DRAPER, LL.B., LL.D. 
Commissioner of Education 



1907 



\p 



<&* 



■^ 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Appointing Officers and Civil Service Regulations 3 

The Nation's Responsibilities Concerning Dependent Peoples 19 

What Next about Union University? 38 

The Schools and International Peace 53 

The American Type of University 62 

New York's Obligations to Her History 76 

Illiteracy in the United States Q 5 

A Federal Educational Plan Needed 101 

National Systems of Education 109 

What the Women's Clubs May Do for the Schools 128 






APPOINTING OFFICERS AND CIVIL SERVICE 
REGULATIONS 

ADDRESS AT THE CONFERENCE OF STATE AND MUNICIPAL CIVIL 
SERVICE COMMISSIONERS, HELD IN THE SENATE CHAMBER AT 
ALBANY, ON OCTOBER II, I906 

Mr President: 

You have very courteously invited me to discuss the State civil 
service laws and regulations from the standpoint of officers who 
have to make appointments. If a multiplicity of appointments 
could qualify one for the duty I might be expected to be able to 
meet it, for there are something like three hundred employees in 
the Education Department and there are few of them whose status 
has not been changed, upon my responsibility, in the last two and 
a half years, since the educational unification act went into oper- 
ation. Still, I am bound to say that I have no special preparation 
for the task your courtesy has assigned to me, and I know I shall 
stand sorely in need of your consideration when I accept such a 
conspicuous and favorable opportunity for the expression of my 
rambling thoughts upon an exceedingly important subject. 

The last report of your commission, Mr President, shows that 
January 1, 1906, there were 84,479 persons in the employ of the 
State and the counties and cities of the State subject to civil service 
laws. Of these, 61,861 were in the classified service. I have - no 
exact information concerning the compensation of this service. 
If the average annual salary is $750, which seems small, then the 
total cost is about $63,000,000. To insure decent appointments, 
to protect places from imposition and occupants from outrage, to 
encourage competency and assiduity by proper rewards and make 
certain of reasonable justice as between rivals, to keep all of this 
employment and all of this money from appealing to the cupidity 
of the indolent and from debauching the sentiment of the State, to 
assure a service which is competent, alert, responsive, and polite, 
and which at the same time can be resistive and which will never 
sell out the interests for which it stands, provides a fit study for an 
expert and a very proper ground for solicitude on the part of all 
good citizens. 

There are plenty of people who are unable to see why unlimited 

3 



4 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

authority does not always put an ideal appointee in every place 
in the public service. They do not realize that there is no unlimited 
authority in representative government ; that the flesh of popular 
sentiment and the blood of common support as well as the naked 
skeleton of statute law are factors in the case; that ideal men 
seldom want the place, and that unideal men always do ; that other 
tests than written examinations, which often ascertain what one 
does not know rather than what he does know, are necessary to 
determine one's fitness for a place ; and that temperament and 
adaptiveness, even discrimination, experience and courage, are 
quite as vital as literary scholarship and general culture to 
expertness and usefulness in the public service. 

There are other people to whom it has never occurred that any 
American citizen needs any other qualification than that of getting 
enough votes for an office, or gathering enough influence to secure 
an appointment, in order to prepare him for any office from the 
presidency to the constableship with which one of the presidents 
frequently boasted that he began his official life. They do not 
see why one has anything to do with politics if it is not to secure a 
job. Their wrath runs high if offices are not the early fruits of 
their political victories ; though their faith is shaken when it comes 
to the victories of the other people. They do not know, or if they 
do they are — for the time being — indifferent to the fact that any 
such theory is the sure forerunner of both personal and party 
humiliation. 

There are still other people, and many of them, who do not take 
the trouble to think about the matter, who care for little which 
does not promise advantage to themselves, and who lack the taste 
or the energy for political activity. They keep quiet, refrain from 
stirring opposition, and take advantage of any wind from any 
quarter. When they want something, they want it very badly. 
Then they can not understand why every interest should not turn 
aside for theirs. Seeking something, they think that the laws and 
rules are made only to fool the uninitiated, and when disappointed 
they are very skeptical about square and honest men in public life. 
Passing for most excellent people, professing rectitude, and 
possessing it so long as no selfish interest is in the way, they are 
singularly deaf to all reason and blind to all principle when a real 
test comes and conscience toys with temptation. 

As there are people, so there are appointing officers, with very 
diverse outlooks. I have no means of striking an average between 
or making a composite picture of them. So I must proceed from 



APPOINTING OFFICERS AND CIVIL SERVICE REGULATIONS 5 

my own point of view. Of course, that has been determined by 
my reading and my experiences. 

I have not been without experiences in politics. They were 
costly in time and productivity, but perhaps worth while. I do 
not look back upon those experiences with unlimited satisfaction, 
but I am grateful for the influences which they have exerted upon 
my understanding. There are two men, so far as politics is con- 
cerned, for whom I am sorry. One is the man in politics who 
has no other means of getting a living and no other entertainment 
than the excitement of the political campaign, and the other is the 
man out of politics who has never had the exhilaration of following 
a flag, the hilarity of whooping it up for a party ticket, the supreme 
joy of figuring up the returns on election night and finding that 
enough saints have, in the course of the day, recorded themselves 
upon — what seems to him — the Lord's side of the fight. 

If there are any men who ought to command our admiration 
they are the men who are fitted for a profession or a vocation and 
live, or may easily live, by it and yet are decisive enough to be 
interested in politics, energetic enough to sustain a party, and 
capable and patriotic enough to be safe factors in the public service 
when occasion arises for it. Then if they develop real adaptation 
to public life they bring great strength to it. They are safer and 
more successful in the executive offices of the State or in the 
Legislature than others because they know the outlook and the 
ways of politics and are familiar with the routine and the 
atmosphere of official functions. There are altogether too sweeping 
popular impressions against men who are successful in politics 
and prominent in public life. As a rule they average quite as 
honest as other men would in like situation. They have gathered 
strength and balance out of their experiences. They see the best 
road more clearly than the inexperienced, and are able to 
withstand storms which would overwhelm the uninitiated. 

Such men, are not illogical or unreasonable about subordinate 
appointments. There are no more generous and wholesouled men 
in the world. They want to help others. They have been supported 
by others and the sense of gratitude has been developed with their 
other senses. The one thing that they can not afford is to be 
outwitted by other men in politics. It is death to be unable to 
get plunder which others can get. They have never accepted in 
its completeness the doctrine that the blood of the martyrs is the 
seed of the church. Whether it is or not, they do not intend to 
supply any blood for any such purpose. But they appreciate the 



6 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

necessity of observing principles and the need of laws quite as 
well as other people, and if satisfied that these are being executed 
on the square, and that no hidden advantage is being given to 
another, "they are ordinarily content. It is certainly within the 
fact that they are more philosophical than other people in quest 
of a job when disappointed, or that their discontent is better 
concealed and their grief less persistent. Wherever the factor of 
personal recommendation comes in, theirs is quite as discriminating 
and reliable as that of other people. 

There have been overwhelming changes about all this in 
twenty-five years. A friend told me the other day of going to the 
head of one of the State departments in the early 8o's, and asking 
for a vacant clerkship of a low grade. The answer was : " Young 
man, this is a political place. If you haven't got the most influence 
you can't get it." That evidences a state of things which is 
impossible now. It was possible then only because the public 
service was, even such a little time ago, primitive. In thirty years 
the things which the State and the municipalities are expected to 
do and the number of people who have to be employed to do them, 
have multiplied overwhelmingly. The growth of the service has 
created the necessity of going back to basic principles and making 
laws and regulations for their enforcement. 

There are reasons enough why one who comes to the headship 
of a great department or an important work should have immediate 
and confidential assistants of his own free choice, so far as may 
be necessary to his personal comfort, to securing accurate infor- 
mation, and to executing any plans within the terms of his 
commission. There is no reason why all ordinary positions, 
capable of classification, which claim competency possible of meas- 
urement by known standards and which have no influence over 
any policies which the head of the department has been set to 
execute, should become the corrupting stakes of political contests. 

And not only the decency and integrity of political parties, but 
the imperative efficiency, the respectability and the responsiveness 
of the public service; the rights of all who may be ambitious to 
enter it; the superior rights of persons of proved competency and 
adaptability already in it; and the steadily unfolding progress of 
the State — all are against such corruption. 

It is easier to see that and to say it now than it used to be. 
Indeed, there was not the need of saying it in the earlier and more 
primitive times. When the need came, it took unusual and con- 
vincing foresight and much courage to say it. The men who did 



APPOINTING OFFICERS AND CIVIL SERVICE REGULATIONS 7 

say it were considered prudes and freakish and were visited with 
sarcasm and ridicule by the hotheaded and unthinking. The 
refinement and sensitiveness of Dorman B. Eaton, George William 
Curtis and Carl Schurz suffered keenly because of their convictions 
and their courage upon this subject. But their names will be 
familiar after those of multitudes who barked at them are forgotten. 

When Senator Conkling, in the memorable Rochester convention 
of September, 1877, made his quite as memorable declaration that 
"When Dr Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a 
scoundrel, he was unconscious of the then undeveloped capabilities 
and uses of the word ' reform/ " he was shaping a phrase to delight 
the delegates, but he was illustrating to us the distance between 
the general trend of the thinking of that day and the well 
established and accepted policies of our day. 

When Senator Ingalls went to the White House and asked 
President Harrison to turn out a Democrat and appoint a Repub- 
lican to a postoffice in Kansas, the President asked him how long 
before the term of the incumbent would end, and the Senator said 
he thought about three years. " Then Mr Cleveland allowed his 
Republican predecessor to fill out his term; don't you think we 
ought to do as well as Mr Cleveland did?" asked the President. 
" But, Mr President," snapped the Senator, " before you follow 
Mr Cleveland too much you. had better think where Mr Cleveland 
is now." Yet Mr Cleveland's road led to the White House a second 
time and the Senator's made a bee line for Kansas. 

Between the stinging remarks of these two brilliant senators 
something had happened which gave introspection and courage to 
presidents, if not to all senators. In the presidential campaign 
of 1884 it fell upon me to be chairman of the executive, or 
campaign committee of the Republican State Committee. You 
will some of you recall that there was some lack of enthusiasm 
and hilarity on my side in the week following the election. After 
it was all over I asked Mr George William Curtis why all of the 
Civil Service Reform people supported Mr Cleveland, and he told 
me a story. He said that in the middle of the campaign a hundred 
of the leaders of civil service reform held a secret meeting in New 
York. They had become embittered through the indifference of 
the Republican leaders, were ready to do almost anything, and 
undecided what to do. It was finally decided that Mr Curtis should 
communicate with Mr Cleveland, and then advise his associates 
and they would act upon his advice. He had no acquaintance with 
Mr Cleveland and determined to write him a letter, which he 



8 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

intrusted to a mutual friend with the understanding that it should 
first be shown to Mr Cleveland and then delivered only if he 
should express his willingness to receive and answer it. The letter 
was shown to the Governor in his office, in this building, on a hot, 
August day. Somewhat to the surprise of those concerned, he said 
at once that he would gladly receive it and if his friend would 
return in an hour the answer would be ready for him. That answer 
set all of the influences at the command of the " reformers " into 
active operation for the Democratic candidate. Everybody knows 
now that they were sufficient to change the result of the election. 
Perhaps other interests were sufficient, but this was certainly suffi- 
cient. Such a change, from such a cause, was enlightening. It 
was enough to clarify the outlook of presidents and senators and all 
the rest of us who were not too obtuse to be in the reckoning. 

Mr Dorman B. Eaton, who was for years the president of the 
National Civil Service Commission, wrote a book upon the civil 
service system of Great Britain some thirty years ago. At the 
request of President Hayes he visited England to investigate and 
report upon the system. He was obliged to do it without being 
reimbursed for his services or even his expenses by the government. 
His report was published as a private venture. It was not light 
reading. It was a long book, closely printed. It was a heavy book, 
in two senses. I bought and read it. I have just looked it up in 
anticipation of this address. I read it through, for I find my pencil 
marks and marginal comments from beginning to end. That was in 
1882. The comments are not just what I would make now. Mr 
President, it was before your commission had been created. I 
had been chairman of the Republican County Committee of Albany 
county for three years and was just breaking out the road to the 
State committee. I do not mind saying that that book is an 
evidence which I would not now willingly dispense with. Either 
I was not as bad as I have believed I was in the midst of my 
youthful political activities, or else I made use of the best means 
of enlightenment before some older and very much more prominent 
men than I thought well to do so. 

The book made an impression, for it treated in a very able way 
a very great subject. It is probably within the fact to say that in 
point of capacity and integrity there is no public service in the 
world equal to that of Great Britain. At Liverpool, or Halifax, 
or Melbourne, or Hong Kong, or Singapore, or wherever else the 
" Union Jack " floats, one may do business with a British officer 



APPOINTING OFFICERS AND CIVIL SERVICE REGULATIONS 9 

who is an honest man and who capably represents the British 
crown. Perhaps I ought to qualify. You may do business with 
him — if he is ready. It takes him a long time to get ready. He 
might remind you of the blunt old lady who, sitting on the middle 
of a bench in Central park and asked by a young man with his 
girl to move along so that they might sit together, answered, 
" No, I won't. New York ain't no place to be accommodatin' in." 
If he did, it would not be because he dropped the same letters she 
did, or had her pestiferous feelings, but because his temperament 
makes him deliberate and his training makes him resistive. In 
any event, he is part of a great, honest, and uniformly intelligent 
service. If he could have a little more of bending courtesy, a trifle 
more of cordial politeness, he would approach the ideal. As it is, 
he is a good character. He is made a better character because 
of the pride he has in his service. He puts H. M. S. (His Majesty's 
Service) upon his engraved visiting cards, and he writes it after his 
name in the hotel registers with the air of a man who feels that 
it is an honor to be associated with the British civil service. 

The American cosmopolitan character, and particularly the jovial 
spirit of American politics, puts into the American public service 
the factors which the English service lacks. But the American 
service has not yet acquired all of the desirable ingredients which 
the British service has. It is not so old and, aside from that, it 
has more to contend with. 

The provision in Magna Charta by which the King engaged 
not to "make any justices, constables, sheriffs, or bailiffs, but of 
such as know the law of the realm," was the first real stroke at 
the theory of the feudal kings that all public offices were their 
personal perquisites and that all appointees must become their 
personal retainers and supporters. But no one then conceived the 
extent of the intricacies of modern public service. It was six 
hundred years after Magna Charta before Great Britain began to 
take a rational attitude concerning the constitution of the civil 
service. We separated from her without bringing away any infor- 
mation or any laws or traditions upon that subject, and until real 
needs and dangers appeared the pioneer life and democratic 
government in this country were not as favorable to the systematic 
organization and regulation of the public service here as the 
economic and political conditions in the old country were favorable 
to it there. 

Our country is a democracy. The British empire is a monarchy 
— a limited monarchy, it is true, but still a monarchy. Kings and 



IO NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

queens may come and go, but the crown stays in the family and 
goes on forever. They are never torn up by a presidential election. 
That is not saying that it would not be better if they were. Their 
parliamentary elections are far less frequent than ours. And when 
the control passes from one party to another and a new cabinet 
results, it has no effect upon the personnel of the civil service. 
They are distinctly opposed to frequent changes, while we seem 
to like them. But that is perhaps the least of it. The masses are 
deliberately kept from thinking that they may enter the public 
service. The sons of the higher orders are especially trained for 
that service. All the rest are destined to simple, unofficial 
employment, if not to personal service. They are in a bad, though 
rather promising, mix-up over there just now about elementary 
schools. They have no such universal, common, primary school 
system as ours. They have universities for the higher classes but 
the humbler classes do not think of going to them. They do not 
hear that if they do not go to college they will miss their oppor- 
tunity in life. There is no system of high schools to connect the 
elementary schools with the universities. The boys are not told 
that they have an equal chance with every other boy to get up 
near the headship of the kingdom. If they were told so it would 
not be true. Not many are even headed for clerkships. The great 
body are destined for manual work. They follow their fathers. 
But they are not troubled about it. They are a capable, substantial, 
deliberate and contented people, who often have a better time of 
it and live longer than some of us who are everlastingly scrambling 
for the mountain peaks of learning and opportunity. That is not 
saying that it is not better to scramble. It is only proving the 
point that they have had less to contend with than we in perfecting 
civil service. 

There is no better evidence of the ability of the American spirit 
to meet difficult questions, and of democratic government to sur- 
mount troublesome situations, than appears in the rapid strides 
which have been made in this country in the growth and the 
regulation of the civil service. It is a cumbersome, involved, and 
exceedingly sensitive subject. The interests of the service call for 
work of widely differing qualities. Men and women are very 
unlike in their capacity for doing things. That must be sifted 
out somewhat before the original appointment. Then, officials 
and clerks are very unlike about learning to do things after they 
have the opportunity. One becomes very expert, handy, agreeable, 
helpful and happy. Another grows moody, jealous, subtle, and 



APPOINTING OFFICERS AND CIVIL SERVICE REGULATIONS II 

troublesome. If rewarded on the basis of merit, the first would 
go forward rapidly — and the other would go out. But there are 
endless things in public administration which in justice ought to 
be done which it is not expedient to do. You must be cautious 
about favoritism and prejudice. Time often helps you. If time 
does not settle the matter for you, you had better settle it for 
yourself, if you can. But the common rights of all citizens, and 
the legal rights of all in the public service must be absolutely 
guarded; and the moral rights which one always acquires through 
honesty, assiduity and real competency in doing things must be 
recognized also. In some way, specially trained men and women, 
who are few in numbers and who are not hunting places, must 
be had for specially expert duties. Graduates of the advanced 
schools must have due credit for that. The presumptions are in 
their favor. But the fact that a great many men and women who 
have never been in college can do a great many things better than 
a great many men and women who have been to college, must 
have recognition also. The situations are innumerable and their 
different shadings utterly beyond the common comprehension. 

So far as may be, it is all to be governed by law and regulation. 
A system of laws and regulations which assumes to do it will be 
as complicated as the civil or penal code. It must be changed to 
meet new conditions, and it must be responsive to the growth of 
the service and the experiences of men and women who want to 
perfect it. Yet it must not be fickle. There must be substance 
and steadiness about it. It must stand the test of critical 
investigation. It must justify itself by its operation. It must 
accomplish what it undertakes. 

Any lack of integrity in the system is absolutely fatal to it. If 
anybody can tamper with it ; if things can be done in the dark 
which will not stand the light of day ; if there are subtleties about 
it which really help partizanship, and if the men who are set to 
execute it are not its sincere friends, there is little hope for it. It 
is an accepted principle of international maritime law that a 
blockade in order to be binding must be effective. That is, that 
the law of nations will not allow a power at war to capture a 
neutral at a blockaded port unless it maintains a blockade which is 
effective enough to capture or be a real danger to all neutrals. 
In other words, a nation must do what it pretends, and it must 
be disposed and able to treat all alike. That principle is as vital 
in civil service law as in sea-going law. Whatever is undertaken 
must be efficiently accomplished, the blockade must be effective, 



12 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

and all in like situations must be treated exactly alike, so far as 
law and regulation and sound purpose and good judgment can 
do it. 

But again, while the civil service is to be controlled by law, the 
law is to be interpreted and executed by rational men. It is difficult, 
often impossible, to make a rule of law to meet all cases. So, in 
the enlargement and the management of the civil service, arbitrary 
devices or even set examinations do not meet all situations. 
Absolute justice as between candidates for appointment or as 
between associate employees desiring promotion is not possible. 
If nothing but an inflexible rule, or the ability to pass examinations 
set by persons who can not know the personal qualities of the 
candidate, were to govern, justice would often miscarry very widely. 
All persons charged with the execution of the laws study their 
purpose and observe their intent. One who does that rationally 
and sincerely and who can not be pulled around by personal or 
selfish interests need not be afraid. No censure worth minding 
falls upon an administrative officer who mixes with the law that 
guides him the good sense which he ought to have and the genuine 
intention to gain the law's ends which must be a part of his official 
equipment. 

But the civil service laws go further than that. They expressly 
confer a wide discretion upon civil service officers and upon 
appointing officers. They expect all such officers to make liberal 
allowance for discipline gained in regular study in organized 
institutions, for actual experience and accomplishment as against 
the mere ability to pass examinations, for special study for special 
duties, for expertness in manipulation, for length of service, and 
for about everything which shows that one person has any real 
claim to consideration above another. And I am not sure that, 
with the general acceptance of the essential principles of civil 
service regulation, and with the fact thoroughly established that 
there is to be no hidden or unworthy preference given to any one, 
there will not be quite as much hurt to the service from the disin- 
clination of officers to exercise the discretion which the law 
reposes in them as from any improper or corrupt stretching of it 
beyond its proper limits. There are plenty of officials who put 
responsibilities upon the law which the law puts upon officials. 
It is a convenient and safe way for the officials, but it often defeats 
the ends of the law and of administration. To be good laws, the 
civil service laws, above all laws, must have good executors. 

The point of civil service regulations is to guard appointments 



APPOINTING OFFICERS AND CIVIL SERVICE REGULATIONS 13 

against incompetence, partizanship, favoritism and greed, and not 
to retain unsatisfactory employees in positions. If there is no way 
of getting a favorite into a vacancy, there is little probability that 
the vacancy will be created without reason. Common sentiment 
seems to exact less of an official clerk or messenger in a public 
office than in private employment. The head of the department 
who exacts what the manager of a private establishment must exact 
of employees gets much criticism for it. This is unjust, but it 
influences official action. If the official expects to bear his 
responsibility but for a couple of years, he is likely to fail to see 
a good many things which he will feel obliged to see if this respon- 
sibility is to be continuing. But in any event it is far from an 
agreeable duty to discharge an employee in a public office, and in 
the absence of the unlimited authority to fill the place there is 
more likelihood of too much that is wrong being submitted to than 
there is that there will be any undue exercise of the power of 
removal. 

Discipline, the daily atmosphere which exacts regularity of 
attendance, aptness for work, responsiveness to authority, cheer- 
fulness and self-respect, responsibility for specific duties and quick 
accountability, is as important to public service as original 
appointments or promotions in the service. That depends, not 
upon benevolent preachments alone, but upon rewards and punish- 
ments as well. It would be agreeable if we could feel that all 
people have correct intentions and character enough to carry them 
out. It would even be delightful if all the members of a large 
force of employees would do as well as they know. The larger 
number will ; but the number who will see what kind of stuff their 
supervision is made of, who will think maneuvering will gain them 
an advantage, and who will limit their travels in the wrong direction 
only by the likelihood of their losing their heads, is by no means 
a negligible quantity. If they can rely upon outside influence to 
protect them against themselves, the service is broken down, every 
honest associate in the service is outraged, and they themselves 
are doomed to mediocrity and to a dependent, hollow, false life. 
Regime — system — is imperative. It is stronger than individuals ; 
it is the helper and the protection of individuals. It is not easily 
corruptible and it is not quickly fickle. But it is to be based upon 
justice and guided by sense. Theory and practice must be 
consistent; law and administration must cooperate; civil service 
commissions and executive officers and subordinate employees 
must all help one another in cheerful submission to a system which 



14 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

is greater than any of them ; and public sentiment must be educated 
to sustain both public law and public officers, if there is to be any 
satisfaction in public service and if the high ends of democratic 
government are to be reasonably or measurably met. 

There is no trouble about original appointments to subordinate 
positions. About all that mere youngsters are good for is to try 
examinations. All they can ordinarily show is what they can do 
in passing examinations. Just out of school, they can often do 
that better than their elders can. It does not prove a great deal 
— about enough to entitle the best of them to their chance. It is 
convenient enough for an appointing officer to push a button when 
there is a vacancy, get the names which stand near the head 
of the eligible list, look the aspirants over, find that some won't 
do at all, and that others are getting better than $30 per month, 
and finally pick out the one who has come up with his first real 
opportunity in the world and is anxious to seize it. 

As you go on the road, the big potatoes work to the top, the 
medium ones hold comfortable but not conspicuous places in the 
middle of the load, and the little ones work out under the tail- 
board of the wagon. So it is with boys and girls in the public 
service. There is some difficulty in so arranging it that the ones 
who are destined for the top can get there as soon as they ought, 
and so that the ones who must work out under the end board 
shall accomplish that as soon as may be well, but, happily, they are 
young and can wait, and what ought to be comes around in some 
way in its own good time. 

When it comes to higher grade positions and to more highly 
specialized duties, and to older and more expert people who have 
already had their feet on the ground and accomplished some 
things, the course is not so clear. Some preference should, in all 
justice to individuals, and for the highest good of the service, be 
given to those who are in the line of promotion, have proved their 
worth in subordinate places, have shown their disposition to make 
the most of themselves and of their opportunities, and are familiar 
with routine. How much preference should be given them is a 
question which none but a sane and true civil service commission 
is legally competent to determine. Certainly that preference should 
not go so far as to lead any to think that all must come in at the 
foot of the service, or that all who do will reach the top if only they 
outlive all the rest. The factors that give them the right to special 
preferment must clearly be special and all-round intellectual 
resourcefulness, special aptness and expertness, and special worth 



APPOINTING OFFICERS AND CIVIL SERVICE REGULATIONS I'5 

because of special accomplishments. Every one who has rendered 
a specially faithful and competent service to his state or city has 
laid the state or city under some obligation to him, which ought 
to be regarded when the opportunity for rewarding that service 
arises. But this can hardly be carried so far as to exclude all the 
others who may have a broader culture, greater resourcefulness 
and keener competency gained in study and training in other 
lines either outside or inside of the public service. Here the exami- 
nation must be deeper and more specialized, and when it is and 
allowance is made for things done and for recognized qualifica- 
tions outside of the ability to pass set examinations, no injustice 
is likely to be done. 

I do not wish to seem to underestimate the value of examina- 
tions in the middle grades of the service. If duties are special, 
they claim some special mastery of a subject. One who has 
mastered a special field is likely to be able to show it in an exami- 
nation, and one who has not is likely to reveal the fact that he has 
not mastered the subject. If he does not remember a particular 
fact, which may be but ought hardly to be called for in an exami- 
nation, he can certainly show the extent of his grasp of the subject. 
If examinations are set to elicit what candidates know, rather than 
what they do not know, there will be little difficulty. And the 
ability to write intelligently and intelligibly about what one knows 
is the best proof of the special knowledge and of the general 
competency which are equally requisite. 

In this connection it may be worth while to inquire why it is 
not practicable to accept in civil service tests the credits which 
candidates may have earned in the State academic examinations. 
Examinations ought not to be unnecessarily multiplied. Each part 
of the public service may well support other parts, whenever prac- 
ticable. Work in the secondary schools might, so far as I can see, 
very well be encouraged by the support which recognition in the 
public service would give to it. It is not only recognized but re- 
quired for admission to the colleges and the learned professions. 
The academic examinations are very well set. We hope that they 
are to be still better prepared through the management of the State 
Examinations Board which is just being organized, whose func- 
tion it will be to make the examinations illustrative of the best 
teaching and responsive to the latest educational progress. No 
one questions the integrity of the academic examinations. They 
are practically universal in the State except in the City of New 
York and are now to become operative in that city, for the Board 



l6 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

of Education of that city yesterday determined to make them so. 
The system distinguishes our State. Its results are recognized in 
all the states. They are accorded good value for all purposes in 
this State except for admission to the civil service. A State 
standard good for one State purpose ought to be good for other 
State purposes at least. These standards represent good and uni- 
formly reliable educational values, better than any others in 
America outside of the good colleges and universities. They are, 
I know, having some inevitable bearing upon civil service appoint- 
ments. Why should they not have complete and legal recognition ? 
It would doubtless lighten the burdens of the civil service exam- 
iners and articulate your work with that of the State Education 
Department in ways which would be to the advantage of all 
interests that are concerned. 

Returning to the subject from which there has been a slight 
digression, it is submitted that perhaps the most difficult task with 
which the public service has to deal is the securing of specially 
trained experts for the highest positions in the service. Very 
likely the very technical scientific and library work of the State, 
which is in charge of the Education Department, makes that 
department peculiarly subject to this difficulty. It frequently hap- 
pens that we must have specialists like whom there are not many 
in the nation. We need the best there is. The man whom we 
want is not looking for a place. He is already in one where he is 
esteemed, and he is hardly open to negotiations because he does 
not wish to seem to lightly regard the place where he is, or to 
disturb his present employers without practical certainty that the 
way is open to him to go to another place of greater conspicuity, 
emoluments and usefulness. He does not wish to sign a formal 
application and he would refuse to submit to a written examina- 
tion. We have had several situations like this on our hands in the 
past year, and we have secured the men we wanted through the 
very cordial sympathy and the very wise course of the State Civil 
Service Commission, who have employed special examiners of 
well known standing and complete information of the subject to 
make ratings of the men who were in the zone of consideration, 
and available. And doubtless we should not trouble ourselves 
overmuch so long as things go well, but one can not help wonder- 
ing what might happen if a less discriminating and courageous 
attitude should be taken by a Commission. There are not a few 
instances and many shadings of situations such as I have described 
which are exceptional and were not contemplated by the civil 



APPOINTING OFFICERS AND CIVIL SERVICE REGULATIONS I'7 

service laws, and which must have the help of the Civil Service 
Commission if the laws and regulations are to level up and not level 
down. 

On the whole, I am glad enough to be able to say freely that I 
have no adverse comment to pass upon the laws and regulations, 
and no criticism to make upon the course of the Civil Service Com- 
mission. The system, though intricate and involved, seems very 
complete, and the commission and its officers have evinced every 
disposition to meet real situations in practical ways. We have 
clearly had the same purposes and ends in view, and when that is 
true, discussion and cooperation find the way out. 

Indeed, I have some sense of personal obligation. If, since the 
educational reorganization in this State, it had been necessary for 
me to measure up the scholarship of all of the employees of the 
two former departments and of others who wanted appointments, 
or if it had been necessary to weigh the rival influences which those 
people might bring to bear, nothing else would have been done 
and I would have been utterly destroyed in the midst of an 
impossible undertaking. 

It is a pleasure to express very earnestly my estimate of the 
work of the Commission, in view of the difficulties with which it 
has to deal, and the allurements, the scarcely disguised coercion, 
and the subtle temptations which it must resist. It is doubtful if 
any of the rest of us have so exacting and perhaps so thankless a 
mission, and none of us, not even the Court of Appeals with all 
its legal subtleties, or the Superintendent of Public Buildings with 
all his persistent tribulations, is entitled to so much public grati- 
tude for public service so provocative of ill temper, when it is done 
with a rectitude and sagacity that produces such a minimum of 
swearing. 

It is a great privilege to engage in the public service of the 
central state in the Union. It is a great honor and a great respon- 
sibility to be trusted with legal authority bearing upon the char- 
acter and the competency of that service. What New York does 
other states will do. No state dare turn back from the task of 
making its public service the cleanest and the best that it can. 
But a state will go forward only as fast as the civic spirit and con- 
science gain the strength and find the way to overcome the forces 
which would debauch and dishonor it, and wake to activity the 
forces which have good intentions but mighty indifferent ways 
of giving them effect. It often seems as though a state will go 
forward upon moral questions only as fast as the dangers menace 



l8 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

and the needs compel. But there is a great satisfaction in the fact 
that a state never goes back, that it goes steadily forward as fast 
as the urgent needs of its public life demand, and that when an 
American community is really aroused and has a chance upon 
moral questions, it uniformly throws the weight of its conscience 
upon the right side and breaks out the road for a distinct advance. 
The opportunities in this State have not been infrequent, and the 
uplifts have not been few or inconsequential. The outlook is 
encouraging. The State is doing more things and doing them 
better than it used to do. In its wealth, physical energy, industrial 
enterprises, and educational activity, in the spirit, the cleanliness, 
and the scientific capacity of its professional life, in new and great 
engineering undertakings, and in the rational freedom and the 
independent and courageous expression of its thinking, it brings 
untold advantage to all who have any part in its onward sweep. 
It is a great honor to have any opportunity to weave a single 
thread into such a history. Such a thread should not be colored 
too much by partizanship, and it should not be rotted by any 
meanness. If one of that kind is put in, it may not stay. Time 
must be taken to get it out and put in another. Whoever puts 
in good, clean, strong threads will not claim any return for it. 
But he will put the Empire State of the Union under obligations 
to him, and there can be no higher compensation than that. 



THE NATION'S RESPONSIBILITIES CONCERNING 
DEPENDENT PEOPLES 

OPENING ADDRESS BY DR DRAPER AS PRESIDENT OF THE LAKE MOHONK 
CONFERENCE OF FRIENDS OF THE INDIANS AND OTHER DEPENDENT 
PEOPLES, OCTOBER IJ, I906 

The business of this conference is to get at the truth and declare 
the attitudes which ought to be taken by the people and the gov- 
ernment of the United States towards those peoples who have 
become subject to the sovereignty of the Republic without being 
able to understand the spirit of it or bear a share of the burden 
of it. 

We have not come up here to discuss whether what is written 
in the histories ought to have happened. We have come to meet 
serious present day questions with the latest information and the 
best thinking we can bring to them. 

We are to divest ourselves of all prejudices or conceits, even of 
all social, political, or sectarian partizanship, to the end that we 
may give to our country a service which shall be distinctly 
patriotic. 

Our generous host has invited us here because he believes that 
a few of us have special knowledge of the Indians, the Porto 
Ricans, the Hawaiians, and the Philippine peoples, and because he 
is assured that all of us would extend more than legal justice — 
even fraternal and generous help — to all peoples under our flag 
who must have assistance before they can have any share in the 
heritage, the philosophy, the burdens, and the joys of the nation. 
It is safe to say that none has been called or omitted because he 
lives or is unable to live in a set, because he worships or neglects 
to worship under the forms of any particular denomination, or 
because he votes or refuses to vote within the lines of a political 
party. It is quite as safe to say that no one is here who hates 
other men only because of their riches, their poverty, their politics, 
or their religion, and that none is not here because he has alliances 
and cherishes them, or holds opinions and believes in them very 
deeply. 

In such a conference speech must be free. There need be no 
fear of conflicting opinions. If one has information he had better 
tell it. If he has convictions he may well express them. It mat- 

19 



20 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

ters not what others may know or think. He will set them right, 
or they will bring him back to the middle of the road. If he 
" knows things that are not so " he ought to find it out — and 
probably will. If the discussion is sincere it will not be too force- 
ful. The truth of most worth is hammered out upon the anvil of 
red hot discussion. 

We must have fundamental principles in mind. We must aim 
at the general policies which ought to be enforced, or the flagrant 
omissions and abuses which ought to be remedied. We can not 
have much to do with the details of administration. We can not 
get snarled up in technical matters which experts ought to be 
allowed to monopolize ; and we can not deal with mere incidents 
which actual and honest workers are settling in the best way 
they can. 

That every man is entitled to equality of security and of oppor- 
tunity with every other man is a fundamental principle of the 
moral law. Our national political philosophy of course declares 
that. But it goes further. It declares that sound American policy 
must not only decree equality under the law and assure every one 
who comes under our flag his chance, but that the strength and 
security of the nation are promoted by encouraging and aiding, 
and sometimes by even forcing, people to make the most of their 
chance. This is a democracy and we have learned that its worth 
and its strength depend upon the units which have share in it. 

The Lake Mohonk conferences have been doing this in the 
interests of the Indians for twenty-four successive years. They 
have declared principles which many denied, and stood for 
policies which appeared impossible, but soon those principles and 
policies appealed to the sense and the justice of the people and 
in a little time they grew into the law of the nation. 

From this mountain the demands for justice and opportunity 
for the Indian have gone forth. It was not such justice as strong 
men or a great people claim as their inherent right, but the nobler 
justice which unfortunate men and a little and unlettered people 
must have before they can see the light or have any part in our 
civilization. 

When it has seemed like crying against the wind, these confer- 
ences have declared for filling the Indian offices of the government 
with men who have more than activity in politics to commend them, 
for Indian administration upon the merit basis, for protecting our 
red children against rapacity and greed, for giving them every 
penny of public moneys that by any moral law belongs to them, 



THE NATION S DEPENDENT PEOPLES 21 

for using tribal and trust funds to the exclusive advantage of 
the cestui que trust, for the training of the head and heart and 
hand harmoniously, for schools and compulsory attendance, for 
unprejudiced standing in real courts, for a real marriage relation, 
for the division of lands held jointly, for work and the development 
of industries, for unrestricted trade with others, for rewards for 
thrift, and punishment for crimes, and for all civic rights and 
responsibilities. 

The Indian question of 1906 is a wholly different question from 
the one of 1880 or 1890 or even 1900. The commonly accepted 
thought of the nation steadily becomes nobler, the government 
support steadily becomes more generous but also more discriminat- 
ing, and the system of management or administration steadily 
becomes more exact, capable and responsible. While it is likely 
that there will be enough to do in the interests of the Indians for 
an indefinite time, still the assurance is not lacking that the senti- 
ment of the country has been clarified, that the trends are in the 
right direction, that substantial results are rapidly developing, and 
that the time which is vital to all large movements in behalf of 
many people will bring very satisfactory results and give added 
proof of the competency of a democracy to deal with very trouble- 
some situations. 

But the rather promising outlook upon Indian matters is now 
accompanied by what are undoubtedly more difficult problems in 
the vast territory and among the millions of undeveloped people 
for whom we almost unwittingly assumed responsibility when we 
deliberately took Cuba from the further domination of Spain. 

The difficulties seem greater because the numbers are greater. 
The Indian population is something like 300,000 and the popula- 
tion of the Philippine Islands, Hawaii, and Porto Rico is some- 
thing like 10,000,000. The difficulties are greater because of re- 
moteness of situation, because of the lack of environment and the 
infrequency of contact; greater because of more sharply defined 
physiological differences, of even more thoroughly intrenched 
superstitions and pagan customs, of yet more completely segre- 
gated racial individuality and autonomy; and greater because of 
their many languages, because so far as any tongue dominates it 
is one to which the words democracy and liberty are essentially 
foreign, and because of the extreme difficulty of imposing upon 
such a heterogeneous mass the English speech, without which the 
American spirit and our free and secure civilization can hardly 
be conveyed in a thousand years. 



22 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

Great as this burden is, it has been appointed for us. Our 
national situation and character made it necessary. It has come 
without our seeking, and in what must be deemed to be the logical 
progress of the life of the world and the natural unfolding of the 
plan of the Almighty. We will articulate with any such advance 
and accept our part in any such plan. Under such conditions 
nothing is impossible. 

Conquest for the sake of empire is repugnant to the thought 
of the men and women of this country who settle things. It is 
repugnant because it is idle and because it is wicked. So, too, 
is any refusal to bear the nation's proper part in the progress of 
the world. The indefinite continuance under our sovereignty of 
millions of people who can not share in our sovereignty, without 
our trying to develop them so that they may have a share in it, 
would be abhorrent to us, also. We are not accustomed to mere 
dependencies. Inferior or subordinate peoples are anomalous 
under our political system. But there are some things we will 
not do. We will not cast them away because we can not see 
the end. We will not, for a mess of pottage, trade them with 
some other nation which has no such outlook or mission as we 
have come to have in the world. Neither will we enter upon 
another experiment of enfranchising millions before they can, with- 
out danger to themselves and us, carry some part of the burden 
of governing the world. We will not give them independence until 
they can be independent. When that time comes it is doubtful 
if they will want it, but if they do, and their independence will not 
menace us, they should have it. The question is not the one 
which confronted us in 1865. But we have nothing to do with that 
now. The business of the hour is to develop the industrial habits 
and the moral sense and the political wisdom of these people so 
that they may be safely admitted into our sovereignty, or may be 
able to exercise sovereignty and independence of their own. That 
we must do, or prove that it is impossible, or dishonor ourselves. 

We may well believe that our island dependencies are not tem- 
porary responsibilities ; not passing episodes in our history. We 
shall have them for a long time after the novelty of the matter has 
worn off. There seems no reason for confidence that many of the 
inhabitants of the Philippine Islands will be ready for the rights 
of American citizenship or for independence in the present genera- 
tion. Therefore, the courses we pursue must anticipate a long run. 

Millions of the people we are thinking about live in houses that 
are not worth five dollars each — even if you are in the market 



THE NATION S DEPENDENT PEOPLES 23 

for shacks. The clothes they wear have not taxed their energy 
or ingenuity overmuch. The food they eat grows without their 
help, in untilled fields or in the waters. Neither their sports nor 
their missionary activities are costly. Every Moro carries a mur- 
derous knife — and often they have more wives than knives. With- 
out any knowledge of balanced rights and obligations, they pass 
their time in loafing and smoking and fishing and cock-fighting, 
and these occupations are not conducive to such knowledge. In 
many ways they are without the physical, intellectual and moral 
qualities found in the American Indian before contaminated by 
the worthless camp followers of white civilization. 

It is not said, of course, that this is true of all, or of nearly all, 
but it is true of millions of the new peoples who have come under 
our care. We may well know the worst as well as the best of it. 
We must be cautious about the reports of officials and workers 
who are enthusiastic over good works done at single points on the 
edge of things, as well as about the reports of travelers who get 
only superficial views and are skeptical about all humanitarian 
undertakings. 

The conference may well emphasize the fact that the United 
States can not hope to gain any strength or any wealth from such 
possessions as these. They can bring us nothing but care, expense 
and responsibility. If, in all good conscience, we do not know 
that we have a heavy task upon our hands, it would be better if 
we were out of it. If our generosity, our interest in extending 
civilization, and our confidence in the power of democratic govern- 
ment to bear its part in the conduct of the world, are not equal 
to the task, we may better turn back before we come to the point 
where we will incur greater humiliation. If we do understand that, 
and if there is fiber in our character and substance in our profes- 
sions, we can not turn back. But the real situation and the theories 
which must determine what we are to do can not be too often 
impressed upon the common sentiment of the country. 

The point of equipoise between administration from Washington 
and administration at Manila and Honolulu and Havana and San 
Juan is an interesting point which it is very desirable for us to 
locate. The moral sense of our wards will be developed or blunted 
by what happens at the official points of contact between us. The 
sense of justice, the outlook and purposes, the patience and for- 
bearance, the evenness and steadiness and firmness of the civil 
and military representatives of the United States will have much 



24 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

to do with the unfolding of moral sense among the unlettered 
children of the nation. 

The readiness and cheerfulness with which their progress is 
rewarded by admitting them into participation in government, and 
the firmness with which that is refused, except when they show 
capacity and reliability, will have something to do with their 
evolution also. 

Before anything else can be done the law must have its way. 
Security of life and property must be assured. In the beginning 
that is possible only through the army. And it may probably be 
said that the army has met its unexpected duty efficiently and 
with very considerable sense and discrimination. 

But aside from the maintenance of order and security, the mili- 
tary power ought not to be much relied upon. It is pleasing to 
know that there are men in any American regiment who are equal 
to any moral service, but that agreeable fact must not blind us to 
the other fact that the experiences, traditions and mental attitudes 
of the army are such as to forbid its being the instrument, or of 
its being accepted as the instrument, of much constructive work. 

Our own standards must begin to prevail. Law suited to the 
situation must be enforced. Crimes must be punished, and not 
only heinous crimes, but petty crimes and misdemeanors. It has 
long seemed to me that one of the prolific causes of the appalling 
negro question which is now upon this country appears in the fact 
that there has been no ready punishment for small crimes. In the 
Southern States the negro has been taken as a chattel and a joke. 
Little crimes seem to have been expected and to have gone un- 
noticed, or at least unpunished. This bred negro irresponsibility 
and developed a large crop of great crimes. A military tribunal 
which expresses and exercises force is not apprehensive about 
little offenses which are outside of and do not affect the military 
organization. Military authority in civil matters is understood to 
be but temporary. It must, as quickly as may be, give way to 
civil courts which will take cognizance of all offenses and have 
an eye on the long future. It does not seem desirable that mili- 
tary officers continue until native magistrates can be developed, 
if the process is to be slow. The American civil magistrate may 
well supplant the American military officer in our dependencies as 
soon as law can have its sway and order is secure. Then let the 
native civil magistrate be put in the place as soon as he is prepared 
for it. But let us profit by our Indian experience and beware of 
magistrates and courts who make a travesty of justice. 



THE NATION'S DEPENDENT PEOPLES 25 

Whenever the flag of the Union is raised in any land it must 
speedily cast its shadow upon a school. It must be a school which 
is more than a form or a show. When a school comes to stand for 
the authority and character of the American people in a remote 
land, when it becomes the main reliance of all progress, it must be 
the living expression of the keenest moral energy and the hardest 
thinking which sprung out of the heart and mind of the Republic. 
It must be a practical and an adaptable school. It must not be too 
fast to undo any spiritual tendencies or any established forms of 
worship which it may find at its door. It must not undertake 
precipitately to change habits, dress, pastimes, or intellectual traits, 
so long as moral questions are not involved. It must not be 
organized upon a basis of expense common in the thrifty towns of 
the United States. It must know that the school and its con- 
stituency must be adjusted to each other if there is to be any 
enduring service, and that the school will have to do much of the 
adjusting to have it so. Above all, it must know that the only 
lasting training of any worth that one ever gets he gets through 
doing things ; that one is never likely to be of much account who 
does not know the satisfaction of earning his bread in the sweat 
of his brow, and that any intellectual or moral advance which men 
and women ever make comes through the purpose and the power, 
not to break or to destroy, but to construct and to accomplish 
f things. 

What has been done in the way of opening schools has been 
well done. It was about the first thing the people thought of. It 
was an inspiration to see a capable superintendent and a thousand 
teachers start from the States upon the instant to carry the Ameri- 
can system of common schools to unknown millions in far away 
lands. But it is almost impossible to make effective schools 
among an uninterested or antagonistic people. How primitive and 
inchoate these schools must be ! They must be thoroughly 
adapted. They must be related together in a cohesive system. 
They must endure after the novelty has worn off. The people 
must be brought to accept them and support them, and then have 
pride in them. As quickly and as generally as may be, they must 
be taught by native teachers. 

It is said that a hundred Filipino boys are distributed among our 
American universities — mostly among the state universities where 
there are colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts. It is said that 
they are bright and I have it from the university authorities that 
they do well. Doubtless the brightest boys are sent. They ought 



26 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

to be. This is copying Japan. Japan has a general and effective 
system of elementary schools, with a very good system of advanced 
schools. We can not have one without the other. Japan secured 
both by inducing the most experienced American educationists to 
go to Japan and plan a school system, and by sending the most 
promising Japanese boys to American and European universities. 
If these Filipino boys do as well as the Japanese boys did, we 
will in thirty years have an educational system which has really 
taken hold of things in the Philippine Islands. 

I have a good deal of confidence that it would be well to put the 
management of educational matters in charge of the United States 
Bureau of Education. That bureau always has a good man at its 
head. It has a staff of trained educational experts. It knows all 
about educational activities in all parts of the world. It has noth- 
ing to do with politics. It has none too much business. The 
United States has no control over education in the States. There 
is some satisfaction about that. It is nice to have the United States 
say " please " to us, when we find our poor hands in the mouth of 
the federal lion so often. But the United States must look after 
schools in the territories and the dependencies. The Bureau of 
Education is its natural instrument. I am skeptical about leaving 
educational administration wholly to insular commissions. The 
time may come when there will be a motive for political meddling 
with the appointment and the salaries of teachers. We have a long, 
delicate, heavy task before us if we are to make a comprehensive 
and an enduring school system in our island possessions which is 
ever to be capable of getting up power enough to run under its 
own steam. The best administrative organization, adaptable 
courses of instruction pedagogically arranged, continuity and 
steadiness of operation, the fullest training and supervision of 
teachers, freedom from partizanship, and an earlier and closer 
intimacy with the educational work of the world will be assured 
if the management of it is imposed upon the United States Bureau 
of Education. 

The enlightenment of a people can not be wholly left to govern- 
ment. There are many things desirable in education which the 
state can not do. A good public school must be embellished and 
enriched by the things which an interested constituency will do 
for it. Private schools should always be the welcome associates 
of public schools. Wherever there is a school there must be a 
church. And no matter how many schools or churches are estab- 
lished they must be accompanied by voluntary evangelistic work. 



THE NATION S DEPENDENT PEOPLES 27 

In a word, religion is education. Churches and ministers have 
quite as much to do with the development of the Philippine Islands 
as have schools and teachers. 

This brings us to a subject of prime importance which is so 
involved as to make the wisest hesitate. Yet it seems to me that 
it claims the attention of the conference. It can not be ignored 
because it is difficult. With much interest in it, I have no right 
to have any very confident opinion about it. 

The facts seem to be that for centuries so much of the islands 
as was Christian was Roman Catholic. No other Christian denomi- 
nation was there. This church was there in great strength and 
efficiency. Its system and ceremonies were suited to the people. 
Millions adhered to it. It was mixed up with an unworthy 
movement. The mixing of church control with a good government 
is bad ; with a bad government it is vicious and unthinkable. History 
repeated itself. The priesthood became widely corrupted. Impo- 
sition and outrage followed. This was met by pretty nearly 
successful revolution. When we set up a government that could 
govern, our troops released hundreds of priests from prison. The 
situation attracted the attention of the world and aroused the 
resentment and reformatory action of the authorities of the Roman 
Catholic church. Clarified and reinvigorated, its religious reign 
is again very firmly established, not only in the towns but wherever 
in the wilderness its priests can go. Its mission work is aggressive 
and apparently much better than any other that is there. It quickly 
engages the devotion of a people to whom its solemn ceremonies, 
its beliefs, and its administrative methods are especially adapted. 

We have happily invented a political system in this country 
which enables us to live together in reasonable peace notwith- 
standing our many religious denominations. Our fathers in the 
old countries, or even in this country in the pioneer days, would 
not and could not do so well. They were a simpler people with 
a simpler faith and did not need so many sects to accommodate 
their theological differences. But they stood ready to fight, and 
did fight, for what they thought. We have learned that it is not 
worth while and that others have the right to think and pray as 
they please. Can we expect more of our primitive peoples in other 
lands than it was possible for our own fathers to have done ? Our 
Protestant denominations are assuming to contest the ground, but 
in comparison with the work of the Roman Catholic church their 
progress is not a delight to us. It seems to be the fact that the 
Protestant denominations have agreed upon some division of 



28 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

territory so as to avoid conflicts with one another so far as may- 
be, but there is no possibility of avoiding rivalry with the Church 
of Rome in any part of our insular territory. I can not help 
wondering if it is worth while. The people of the Philippine Islands 
will hardly need variety of sects to accommodate their theological 
thinking for a long time. If they ever need them they will know 
how to have them. Denominations will multiply in the natural 
order of things as fast as they are needed. There is special reason 
why any missionary work which assumes to express the American 
spirit and any churches which come to represent the attitude and 
strength of the Protestant churches in the Philippine Islands shall 
do it thoroughly and adequately. I have none but Puritan blood 
in my veins, but I no longer fear that any church will subvert 
American political institutions. I think that the Roman Catholic 
church will become more thoroughly adaptable to American 
political institutions by giving it American confidence. No one 
can doubt its spirituality or its patriotism. I am in favor of 
Protestantism wherever it can be self-sustaining, and am in favor 
of all denominations where the thinking of the people calls for 
them, but I do not fear to express my misgivings about the wisdom 
of the policy which forces sectarianism upon an unlettered people, 
which taxes weak churches in America to support weak churches 
in our island possessions, with no prospect of those churches 
becoming self-supporting, while one strong church is on the 
ground, continues to' occupy it forcefully, and is evidently adapted 
to the situation. 

But we are not to rely exclusively upon either schools or 
churches. They are quite as often the product as the producers 
of civilizations. What poor people want is more money and capacity 
to find the point of equipoise between keeping and using it. If 
the money does not develop the capacity, nothing ever will. Quite 
as much depends upon new forms of native industry, or better 
opportunities for expanding such as they now have in the islands, 
as upon any other one thing. We can not say too often that work 
is the tonic for physical, mental, and moral health. Work brings 
money as well as health. The love of money may be the root of 
all evil, but money itself is the cause of much good. It buys every- 
thing. It is clearly understood. It gives every live man a motive. 
Motives work wonders. Idle people will often bestir themselves if 
a motive is in sight. It is hard for unlettered and isolated people 
to put their labor into channels which will bring returns. They 
can not get their resources into goods and their goods into 



THE NATION S DEPENDENT PEOPLES 29 

markets. They need help, and such help is very potential. People 
are imitative. If a man raises a crop or makes an article that sells 
for money, his neighbors go about it. Out of the wits and the 
money which result from their work they make better homes and 
then they put their heads and their means together and create 
institutions. 

These islands are likely to have rich possessions of precious 
metals. They are not without precious stones. They certainly 
have very considerable agricultural potentiality. They have many 
woods of great strength which take a beautiful dressing and might 
find ready markets in America at a time when our native woods 
are becoming scarce and our markets are seeking novelties. Their 
mechanics seem exceedingly crude but the people appear teachable 
and evidently have their share of mechanical gift. They certainly 
make some very delicate lace and relatively large quantities of very 
beautiful textile fabrics. The men in their prisons make very 
satisfactory household furnishings, and the men who are not in 
the prisons ought to be able to do so. There seems to be no limit 
to the islands' industrial possibilities. What they need is inspiration 
and incentive. 

So far as our law assumes to affect trade, it should favor these 
people. So far as we make tariffs to regulate the prices of commod- 
ities, they should be helpful to insular trade. At no point of 
competition should any advantage be given to interests which 
are no longer in their infancy and are quite able to take care of 
themselves without the protection of the giant arm of the state. 
Capital should be encouraged to venture in the industrial 
development of the islands. Everything should be done to open 
them up to the people of this country. This involves federal 
legislation. The sentiment of the country is filled with generosity 
to our wards, and Congress should adequately and always express 
it. The implications need not be taken too seriously. Congress 
has been doing very well of late. No matter who or what has 
caused it. We tender it the expression of our respectful consid- 
eration, in the hope of other favors yet to come. 

We shall be together but three brief days. Let us lose no time 
in getting into the heart of the business that has brought us here. 
Let us get at the facts. Let us go into whatever we may think 
of that bears upon the facts ; and when discussion shall have 
brought our minds together let us declare, with all boldness, what 
we think. 

The Lake Mohonk Conferences carry no sword. They have 



30 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

no compulsory process, no police, or sheriff, or national guard, 
or regular army. But let no one fear that they are without force. 
They have helped the Indians : they will help them more. They 
will help the Filipinos, and the Hawaiians, and the Porto Ricans, 
and perhaps the Cubans. They have enriched the quality of white 
civilization by helping it to be both just and generous to red men, 
and brown men, and yellow men, and black men. They have 
gathered up, quickened, and declared that public opinion which, as 
Talleyrand said, is more powerful than any monarch that ever 
lived. They have rendered a distinct service to democratic insti- 
tutions and to the sovereignty of the United States, for they have 
helped them to be beneficent as well as powerful, and thereby show 
their right to be. 



CHAIRMAN'S ADDRESS AT CORRESPONDING CON- 
FERENCE 

October 23, 1907 

Mr Smiley and Ladies and Gentlemen: Year after year, twenty- 
five times, the keen interest which the proprietor of this estate has 
had in all unfortunate men and women has brought this conference 
to its gracious hospitality in order to promote the good of the Ameri- 
can Indians. Since the war with Spain for the rescue of Cuba the 
discussions of the conference have extended to the millions of people 
who came under the sovereignty of the United States as the result 
of that conflict. 

At one of our sittings we shall hear from the secretary of the 
United States Board of Indian Commissioners about the influence of 
these twenty-five meetings in stirring Indian sentiment, shaping 
Indian legislation, and reforming Indian administration. Following 
my brief introductory words we shall have from Mr Francis E. 
Leupp, the altogether admirable United States Commissioner of 
Indian Affairs, some of the interesting details of Indian progress 
under the better laws and better administration which, it is not too 
much to say, have largely resulted from the discussions under this 
roof. And now, and in each succeeding year, we shall expect to 
hear from officers, agents, teachers, missionaries, and other workers 
in the Indian service, about the difficulties they encounter and the 
work they are doing. We shall at all times be anxious to give 
attention, sympathy, and encouragement to ail such and to make any 



chairman's address at lake mohonk 31 

declarations to the public which may serve substantial ends. But it 
seems as though the Indian problem has been practically solved so 
far as general policies are concerned, that it is now almost wholly a 
matter of administration, and that we may well begin to make the 
people of our new dependencies the subject of our most serious dis- 
cussions and of our aggressive declarations. 

The Philippine problem has come to be the problem of pressing 
concern to us. There are more people in the Philippine Islands 
than in the State of New York — perhaps twenty times more than 
the Indian population ever was. The conditions are hard and the 
outlook uncertain. It is a hard matter to have such a mass of 
unlettered, semisavage, or wholly savage people under our flag, with- 
out the possibility of assimilating them as we do the millions who 
come to us from other lands, and with some inevitable doubts about 
their ever being able to govern themselves. We are coming to the 
serious stages of the undertaking and the problem looms even larger 
than at first. The sober second thought sees that the practical diffi- 
culties are heavier, that the moral responsibilities are higher, and that 
the possibility of substantial results in world progress are more open 
and unique than at first appeared. It sees also that the reflex influ- 
ence upon the people and the international standing of the United 
States, as well as upon world respect for popular government and 
the coming course of world events, is to be much greater than was 
at first realized. 

It seems to me idle to discuss whether we made a mistake in 
getting the Philippine Islands upon our hands. They are upon our 
hands. Time spent in wondering whether we ought not to back out 
of the responsibility, or ought not to sell them, or barter them, or 
give them away, is time worse than wasted. Aside from that practi- 
cally universal national pride which will never, without convincing 
reasons, relinquish any territory that has once come under the sover- 
eignty of the United States, there is a national conscience among us 
which has some concern about the good faith of governments, and 
will not give over to utter hopelessness, or abandon to any nation less 
disposed and less able to promote their best good than ourselves, any 
dependent people for whom we have once assumed responsibility. 
And there is no other nation better able to bear the burden, and more 
unselfishly disposed to do so, than we are. 

Nor will the people of the United States seek an arrangement 
with the great powers by which the Philippine Islands may, like 
Switzerland, become neutral territory and left to themselves. When 



32 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

the clear majority of the Filipinos show the capacity for building 
institutions which the clear majority of the Swiss have long pos- 
sessed, the suggestion will not be repugnant to our sensibilities, but 
there will then be no point in it. 

There is but one thing to do, and that is to turn a deaf ear to the 
waverers and go right ahead with the load which we have taken 
upon ourselves. And we will do it better if we know that we shall 
not get any shillings for carrying it, and that the road is likely to be 
so long that none of this generation is likely to see the end of it. 

Of the spirit and the acts of the executive officers of the govern- 
ment, so far as I know, there can be no words but those of commen- 
dation. McKinley started nobly when he said, " The Philippines are 
ours, not to exploit, but to develop, to civilize, to educate, to train in 
the science of self-government. This is the path of duty which we 
must follow or be recreant to a great trust. The question is not, 
will it pay, but, will we do what is right?" He acted up to what 
he said. President Roosevelt has been in entire and enthusiastic 
accord with the ideal attitudes of his lamented predecessor. What 
Roosevelt has said has been admirably said and when he induced 
McKinley's Governor General of the Philippines to become the head 
of the War Department, because through the military occupancy 
that department had come to be charged with Philippine adminis- 
tration, and he could thereby bring to his own council table and into 
the position of largest influence upon Philippine affairs the man best 
informed and most trusted upon those affairs, he did quite as much 
as he could do in any way to promote the realization of McKinley's 
and the country's best hopes. 

The information which we get about Philippine matters comes 
through the officers of the army and navy, through missionaries and 
teachers, and through occasional travelers. -In its parts it is tinged 
by inevitable bias. As a whole it is often confusing and conflicting. 
Sometimes a poor little fact is dressed up in such literary clothes to 
get it into the society of the magazines that it must be wholly unable 
to recognize itself. The government reports are ponderous, unsys- 
tematic, lacking in continuity, poorly indexed if indexed at all, and 
therefore not very helpful even to one seeking information : to the 
masses they are inexplicable. 

The following essential facts are much condensed from a recent 
article, having the earmarks of reliability, in the Nezv York Tribune. 
Under Spanish rule the Filipino had nothing to say about govern- 
ment, either local or general. If he went to church it was to one 



CHAIRMAN S ADDRESS AT LAKE MOHONK 33 

ruled by the State, and often corruptly. Under American rule the 
municipal officers are elected by the people, and the provincial 
officers are so elected, except the Governor, who is chosen by the 
municipal councils who are themselves elected by the people, and the 
Treasurer, who is appointed by the Governor General. The people 
have just elected a popular assembly which, with the commission ap- 
pointed by the President of the United States, will constitute a con- 
gress for the islands. The justices of the peace, more than half of 
the circuit judges, and three out of seven justices of the Supreme 
Court are natives. So is the Attorney General and practically all of 
the states' attorneys. There is a native police of 6000 men, many 
of whose officers are natives. The law and the judicial system as- 
sure practically every right guaranteed by the Constitution of the 
United States. Churches are encouraged by government, but are 
neither supported by nor under the control of the state. Under 
Spanish rule it is said there were 200,000 children enrolled in some 
kind of schools, and that the average daily attendance was half that 
number. Now there are 500,000 enrolled, with an average attendance 
of 270,000, in much better schools. The general government is 
spending $2,400,000 per annum for schools besides what is expended 
by provincial and municipal governments. The government main- 
tains 200 pupils in the schools of the United States. The exports 
and imports have increased something like 50 or 60 per cent. In 
eight years the public improvements, — buildings, harbor improve- 
ments, lighthouses, roads and bridges, and vessels for public service, 
— have aggregated something like $20,000,000. The harbor of 
Manila is said to be the best in the Orient. Under government en- 
couragement, but hedged about by safeguards, there have been con- 
structed sixty miles of electric road and a good lighting system at 
Manila, and in the same way the railway mileage in operation in the 
islands has risen from 120 to 205 miles, and 709 miles of new road 
are in process of construction. 

If these statements are true, they certainly form the outlines of a 
picture which is both heroic and heartening. It is none the less so 
because not conclusive of the whole matter, or because many of the 
details of the picture are not up to the expectations of some who 
are not experienced in such undertakings. Of course the whole 
subject, outlines and details, needs informing and patriotic discus- 
sion. There are many in the country, no doubt there are some here, 



34 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

who are skeptical about one phase or another of our policies in the 
Philippines. Certain kinds of skepticism are often healthy. This 
is a good place for such as you to express doubts, because one may 
have them taken out of him and another may make a valuable con- 
tribution to the judgment of all. 

Aside from the training of Filipinos in religion and morals, which 
is outside of the government functions and accepted by the religious 
denominations, and which will naturally have the thought of the 
conference, there are three phases of government policy in the 
Philippines which suggest themselves to me as deserving our dis- 
cussion. These relate to political privileges, to secular education, 
and to industries. 

As to giving political privileges, we are, for obvious reasons, dis- 
posed to go much further than other great nations who have had to 
deal with similar questions. Perhaps we may be disposed to go too 
far. These people are not like our fathers before the American 
Revolution. There may be a golden mean between the extremes. 
Political privileges already conferred are sufficient proof of the de- 
sire to give all that may be safely exercised; and if the fact that 
less than two per cent of the population voted at the recent and 
first general election for a popular assembly, and that those who did 
were clamorous for independence without appreciating its responsi- 
bilities, is not wholly discouraging, it certainly admonishes us to 
hesitate about going further at once or about making promises. It 
is manifest enough that for a long time self-government must be 
very local and simple, and that the possibility of the safe exercise 
of sovereignty by the islands at an early day is quite out of the 
question. 

The adaptation of schools to the needs of the situation is likely to 
be a much more difficult matter than many would at once suppose. 
American schools may not be of the most service to an Un-American 
people, and certainly Filipino schools can not be locally supported 
and administered to the extent that American schools are. Quite as 
certainly, the greatest weakness which we are coming to realize in 
ouf American system will count even more heavily against them than 
us. While we are bound to hold out to every one his equal chance, 
we will do well if we encourage young Filipinos to be workmen 
rather than lawyers, and doctors, and engineers, and promoters of 
enterprises, and managers of other Filipinos. There will be enough 



chairman's address at lake MOHONK 35 

who will get into the professional employments and the managing 
positions without our telling them that they will come short of their 
deserts and miss their opportunities if they do not. Universal 
attendance within fixed ages and an exact elementary training ought 
to be made the fundamental factors in the Filipino schools. We 
may learn much from our near neighbor in the East, Japan, about 
this. 

Filipino industries claim the best attention of the government. 
No people can have a life worth the having unless they have some 
understanding of the economic, moral, and social value of work. 
And hardly can any people be expected to have such an understand- 
ing unless work makes money and is convertible into what money 
will buy. The industrial problem in the Philippine Islands must, 
very likely, be always and necessarily a difficult one. It has been 
doubly so by reason of exceptional occurrences since they came 
under our sovereignty. If there is to be any American aid to 
Filipino industries, congressional legislation must open the way for 
and not hinder it. Federal officers must be led to concentrate their 
study upon the subject, and, having done so, they must be expected 
to take definite public attitudes, and, having done this, they must be 
listened to. The simple industries which will contribute to better 
living must be encouraged through better implements and improved 
methods. And other industries which will find or develop markets 
must be studiously ascertained and methodically introduced by govern- 
ment action and, if need be, by liberal government aid. The amount 
of money we spend in the matter is of little account so long as it is 
honestly expended and really leads to self-supporting industries. 
We are not in this business for commercial gain, and unless there is 
moral gain we ourselves shall be disgraced, if not debauched, by it. 
A tariff against insular products for the real purpose of affording 
superior profits to home industries that are no longer in their infancy 
is abhorrent to the good conscience and overwhelming opinion of the 
American people. The Philippine industries are now "home in- 
dustries " quite as much as any other industries and the circum- 
stances claim for them not only equal terms but any preference 
which their existence and reasonable prosperity may require. There 
are some people who do not see things which they do not want to 
see unless they are told in particular ways. If party managers who 
control these things continue to turn a deaf ear to the gentle voices 



36 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

which are now protesting, they will find that many objectors will 
join forces and they will hear from enough people in a way that 
will be entirely intelligible to them. Not only the revenue tariffs 
but every other instrumentality of the general government is ex- 
pected to be used in uplifting the people of the Philippine Islands. 
McKinley's thought must be carried out. The members of Congress 
talk most entertainingly, and no doubt genuinely; but congressional 
action is often so very different from the congressmen whom we 
know. There is the rub. The Washington departments and both 
houses of Congress, as to everything but the coming elections, have 
come to be the most easily resistive machines in all history. 

For myself alone, I have doubt about making the War Depart- 
ment the essential and permanent Washington instrument of insular 
administration, and it is not relieved even by the qualities and the 
experiences of Secretary Taft. It was natural enough at the begin- 
ning because it was then military administration almost exclusively. 
Perhaps it was well. Possibly it saved us from purely partizan ad- 
ministration. The military service, as President Eliot points out, is 
one for protection and not instruction, and it seems as though the 
essential work we are to do in the Philippines will be more quickly 
done without any unnecessary control by the military establishment. 

We do not overlook little Porto Rico, or our good friends in the 
Hawaiian Islands. The problem with them is by no means so large. 
Before the conference is over you will doubtless know that the 
Hawaiian people are abundantly able to speak for themselves. And 
both of these peoples will quickly get the benefit of any insular poli- 
cies which the overwhelming situation in the Philippines may induce. 

In a concluding word, the millions of Filipinos who have come 
under our care will move out of the darkness and into the light more 
quickly when it is fully realized that whether they do it or not 
depends alike upon themselves and upon the people of the United 
States ; that the process is essentially a moral one and the task upon 
us is one of the world burdens which our own advance has brought 
to us ; that legislation which is not framed upon altruistic lines will 
not serve any good purpose for them or for us; that efficient ad- 
ministration must have very special reference to the things to be 
done, and expert opinion must have the respect and the influence 
which belong to it; and that over all there must be definite, re- 
sponsive and reachable accountability. And there is reason enough 



CHAIRMAN S ADDRESS AT LAKE MOHONK 37 

to question whether it is not desirable that there be an independent 
office at Washington which will have specific and pretty independent 
charge of insular affairs, which will have power to do things and the 
right to be listened to, which will be charged with full knowledge 
about dependencies in general and the Philippines in particular, and 
which will not only be established upon a legal footing that will 
enable it to be independent of all meanness if it is willing to be, but, 
above all else, will be under the direct influence of the better spirit 
of the American people. 



WHAT NEXT ABOUT UNION UNIVERSITY? 

ADDRESS BEFORE UNION UNIVERSITY AT ODDFELLOW'S HALL, ALBANY, 
ON UNION UNIVERSITY DAY, MARCH 7, I907 

Mr Chancellor: 

I rise to make this address with something more in mind than 
the official obligation which requires that I be interested in all 
colleges and do what I may to extend all learning. The history 
of this old college and of these professional schools associated in 
Union University — of one of which I am myself a graduate, — the 
marks which these, institutions have already made upon the intel- 
lectual and particularly the professional development of the coun- 
try, the fact that in a special sense they are the institutions of my 
home people, and an understanding resulting from my later year 
experiences of what these institutions deserve and of what the 
future of this people demands, fill me not only with a warm ap- 
preciation of your courtesy but also make me sensible of consider- 
able temerity in accepting it. 

There are not many colleges in America which date back to the 
eighteenth century and those which do are to be held in special 
honor. Union College is one of them. In 1779 petitions signed 
by a thousand citizens of Albany, Tryon and Charlotte counties 
were presented to the Governor and Legislature in these words : 

" Whereas a great number of respectable inhabitants of 
the counties of Albany, Tryon (Montgomery), and Char- 
lotte (Washington), taking into consideration the great 
benefit of a good education, the disadvantages they labor 
under for want of the means of acquiring it, and the loud 
call there now is, and no doubt will be in a future day, for 
men of learning to fill the several offices of church and 
state; and looking upon the town of Schenectady as in 
every respect the most suitable and commodious seat for 
a seminary of learning in this State, or perhaps in America, 
have presented their humble petition to the Governor and 
Legislature of this State, earnestly requesting that a num- 
ber of gentlemen may be incorporated in a body politic 
who shall be empowered to erect an academy or college in 
the place aforesaid, to hold sufficient funds for its support, 
to make proper laws for its government, and to confer 
degrees." 

38 



WHAT NEXT ABOUT UNION UNIVERSITY? 39 

While it was proposed to call the college Clinton College after 
the doughty old warrior and statesman who was the first governor 
of a state which was then only a year old there is no doubt what- 
ever about this being the germ which sixteen years later took 
corporate form in Union College. 

Let us recall how far away that movement was and the stirring 
condition in which it developed. But twenty-five years before, 
the first convention to consider the matter of forming a colonial 
confederacy with twenty-five delegates representing seven colonies, 
with a resulting plan of union that was rejected by the King be- 
cause it was too democratic and by the colonies because it was 
too autocratic, had met in this city. Some of the same men were 
in both movements. Only three years before independence had 
been declared and only a year before the state government had 
been organized. It was upon the same ground and close upon the 
heels of the most comprehensive, strategic, and disastrous cam- 
paign of the British in the Revolution. Sir Henry Clinton from 
the lower Hudson, St Leger from across Lake Ontario and 
through the valley of the Mohawk, and Burgoyne from the Sf 
Lawrence, along Lake Champlain and the upper Hudson, had 
undertaken to join forces right here and end revolution in America. 
General Schuyler, who instead of Gates was entitled of right to 
receive the sword of Burgoyne, was the best friend and the largest 
contributor to the movement for the new college and the very 
people who had had most to do with turning Clinton back to the 
sea, with dispersing St Leger's regulars, Canadians, and Indians 
at Oriskany, and with capturing the entire army of Britain's most 
arrogant general at Saratoga, were the supporters of it. They had 
cleared the ground and opened the way for it. 1779 was the year 
of Wayne's brilliant feat of arms at Stony Point. It. was the year 
of John Paul Jones and the Bon Homme Richard. It was the year 
of Sullivan's sanguinary campaign against the Indians in the 
Wyoming valley, and it was the year in which George Rogers 
Clark, with a little army that made up in daring what it lacked in 
numbers, appeared at the old fort at Kaskaskia on the upper 
Mississippi in the midst of a night's revelry and gallantly told the 
British officers and their ladies that they could go on with the 
dance but it would be well for them to know that from that point 
it would be under the Virginian and not the English flag. 

The ground upon which Union College was planted was still a 
dangerous frontier. There was hardly a border line between it 
and the subtle and savage Iroquois. Schenectady was then and 



40 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

for thirty years later a part of the county of Albany. Tryon was 
the present county of Montgomery with the territory to the west 
and south, and Charlotte was what is now the county of Wash- 
ington and beyond. There was or had been but one college in 
New York territory, and that had been suspended by the war. 
The idea clearly was to establish a college for the " Northern and 
Western Counties " in anticipation of the development of the State 
to the westward and at a point which would in time become central. 
New England emigration was even then setting towards the Sus- 
quehanna and even the Genesee countries. The rising tide of state 
and national life was beginning to run strongly and the time was 
confidently expected when the seat of the college would be near 
the center of an opulent and imperial state. 

The State was then so young and unversed in the new political 
theory that no one seems to have been very clear about the methods 
of exercising the authority of the commonwealth in the creation of 
a college. It seems reasonable to believe that the movement for the 
new college, deferred from obvious necessity, led to the careful 
consideration and — five years later and as soon as independent 
statehood and nationality were officially declared — to the crea- 
tion of the Board of Regents of the University of the State of 
New York, with power to charter and supervise schools and 
colleges. 

In the petition to the Board of Regents in 1795, which resulted 
in the charter for the college, mention is made of another petition 
for the college at Schenectady, signed by 1200 of the people living 
on the border land of civilization, and presented to the Legislature 
in session at Kingston in 1782. The entire population of Sche- 
nectady by the State Census fourteen years later was less than 
3500, but few as they were the inhabitants of the town proposed 
to give the college something like i8ooo sterling. Not much more 
is known of this phase of the movement. 

In 1785 the citizens of Schenectady by mutual agreement estab- 
lished a private academy in their midst, which was the real organ- 
ized beginning of Union College. 

In 1791 the managers of the academy appealed to the Legis- 
lature for a grant of land in the Oneida Indian Reservation in 
order to get the means which would support their application 
to the Regents for incorporation of a college. But the obdurate 
Legislature apparently thought that the Indians might have rights 
above those of the proposed college to those lands. 

In 1792 the managers of the academy prayed the Regents for a 



WHAT NEXT ABOUT UNION UNIVERSITY? 4I 

college charter, admitting' that they lacked necessary funds but as- 
serting that the endowment was promised but could not be made 
over until there was a corporation which was legally competent 
to hold the same. The Regents were unable to locate a particular 
moment when the essential conditions precedent to the granting of 
a charter would present themselves under that plan with sufficient 
clearness to permit of their granting the request according to law. 
It was another case of Lincoln's Mississippi steamboat which had 
such a large whistle and such a small boiler that if it whistled it 
couldn't run and if it ran it couldn't whistle. New York under its 
Board of Regents has uniformly been much more exacting than 
any other state about requiring the means with which to maintain 
a college before giving it corporate life. Although the Regents 
had never yet had the pleasure of chartering a college they were 
skeptical and heroic enough to refuse the application. But the 
next year they did charter the private academy as a public academy 
of the State. Yet again, early in 1794, the Regents refused an 
application for a charter because of the " low state of literature and 
of funds in the institution." It is not to be inferred that they were 
unsympathetic or disinclined, and as several of the earliest and 
strongest friends of the proposed college were members of the 
Board of Regents it is quite apparent that they were ingeniously 
predisposed, to aid the enterprise more wisely than by prematurely 
granting a charter. In the next year, 1795, the charter was granted 
by the Board. 

The year 1795 was a year of considerable educational import in 
the affairs of New York. It was the year in which the Legislature 
of this State passed the first American statute making a liberal 
appropriation for the development of a State system of common 
schools and requiring all districts to raise amounts equal to their 
distributive shares. And the coincidence between this act and the 
chartering of the college was followed by another, ten years later, 
when an act for the liberal support of the college by the State and 
the act for establishing the State common school fund went 
through the Legislature together. 

All the prominent men of the State were in the movement. The 
names of Van Rensselaer, Oothout, Romeyn, Schuyler, Clinton, 
Ten Eyck, Van Slyck, Van Dyck, Schermerhorn, Vedder, Yates, 
Ten Broeck, Duane, Saunders, Wyckoff, Vrooman, Fonda, Banyar, 
Vlecker, DeWitt, Taylor, DeGraff, and many others are con- 
spicuous. 

The distinguishing marks of this movement deserve attention. 



42 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

At a meeting of the trustees of the academy, which was a fore- 
runner of the college in the wilderness, held in 1794, it was re- 
solved " that public utility, liberality of sentiment, and entire ex- 
clusion of all party whatsoever ought to be attended in forming 
a plan for a college." And at a later meeting held by these trustees 
with a " number of gentlemen of information in the city of Al- 
bany " in furtherance of the project, it was resolved that "A 
majority of the board of trustees shall never be composed of per- 
sons of any one particular religious denomination " and that " No 
president or professor of the college, being a minister of the gospel, 
shall take upon himself or hold the pastoral charge of any church 
or congregation." The charter itself provided that no law or rule 
of the college " should exclude any person of any religious denomi- 
nation whatever from equal liberty and advantage of education, or 
from any of the degrees, liberties, privileges, benefits or amenities 
of the said college on account of his particular tenets of re- 
ligion." I am not laying any implication against the denomina- 
tional college. I am only pointing out that there was a college 
with new and distinguishing attributes in America. Twelve col- 
leges had already come to considerable repute in America but 
none of them had provided for religious differences and the train- 
ing of all the men of a state who should go to college, which was 
the ideal at which this movement aimed. Indeed, the word 
" Union " did not refer to the " more perfect union " of the states 
which had been accomplished in the federal Constitution but six 
years before, as might be supposed, but to the union of all parties 
and religious sects in an up-state movement for the higher 
learning. , 

The predominant thought in the establishment of Union College 
clearly was that it should not be denominational, but quite as 
much that it should not be private, local or exclusive in any other 
sense. It came as near being the State college as the obscure edu- 
cational and democratic outlook of the times would permit. The 
charter was signed by George Clinton as Chancellor, and DeWitt 
Clinton as Secretary of the Regents of the University. Of the 
twenty-three original trustees of the college, seven resided in Al- 
bany, six in Schenectady, three in Ballston, and in Saratoga, Troy, 
Kinderhook, Palatine, Herkimer, and Whitestown, N. Y., and 
Hackensack, N. J., one each. In 1806 the number was reduced 
to twenty-one and the Chancellor and justices of the Supreme 
Court of the State and all the elective state officers were added. 
Once the State provided funds for it upon condition that the 



WHAT NEXT ABOUT UNION UNIVERSITY? 43 

Regents should thereafter appoint the trustees, and the college 
wisely accepted the condition. Amendments to the State Constitu- 
tion have twice worked changes in the State officers who are 
ex oMciis trustees of the college, but in a hundred years the col- 
lege has never been without them. The ex ofUciis trustees are 
now the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Secre- 
tary of State, Comptroller and Treasurer. 

The students were widely distributed. The register of graduates 
of the first half century at the semicentennial anniversary in 1845 
contains the names of 398 graduates of whom but 38 were residents 
of Schenectady. 

But there was even more than this to give the first college 
chartered by the State the flavor and attributes of a state college. 
In his jubilant letter to Dr Romeyn announcing the granting of 
the charter, General Schuyler authorized the trustees to put him 
down for another hundred pounds, and added, " I shall strive to 
procure a donation on the part of this State and as I have already 
conversed with some leading members on the subject I trust my 
efforts will be successful." They were. Schuyler was not only a 
soldier idol, but he was also a man of wealth, of social distinction 
and of conspicuous political sagacity and influence. He had a 
large estate in lands and had carried on a vast mercantile business. 
His wife was a Van Rensselaer, and his daughter was the wife 
of Hamilton. He had been one of the first two United States 
senators chosen by the State ; he was now a member of the State 
Senate and of the Board of Regents, and before his frail body was 
to find rest in our Rural cemetery he was again to go to the 
federal Senate. There was reason enough why the energy of such 
a man should bring State aid to the college. It did. In 1795 the 
Legislature granted $3750, in 1796 $10,000, in 1797 $1500. In 
1805, $45,000 was derived from lotteries authorized by the State, 
which were then held proper enough, and following an act of the 
Legislature in 1814 some $300,000 was received in the same way. 

Here was a college coming rapidly into the full estate of a state 
college. It was the offspring of the freest democracy of the times. 
There was no exclusiveness about it. Its doors swung to the 
masses. It was accepted by the people of the State. The State 
was not only aiding it but was giving money for the particular 
purpose of meeting the expenses of poor students. The old idea 
that a college is to come down from above and is to be the exclu- 
sive instrument of wealth, was just beginning to be shaken with 
the knowledge that a college can be pushed up from below, can 



44 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

be born of political power as well as of wealth, and can become 
the efficient instrument of the masses. The idea of a state college 
was not new and it was not peculiar to New York. It was the 
logical outworking of democracy and nationality. It resulted, in 
considerable measure, from the French influence in our affairs. It 
was incubating and perhaps hatching in other states. It brought 
the able and the wealthy into cooperation with the poor for the 
common good and therefore the good of both. It was leading 
right on to public and common proprietorship in the instruments 
of the deepest learning, the very thing which experience was to 
prove necessary in American democracy, when something hap- 
pened to throw it all over for many years if not forever. 

In 1823 gossip began to busy herself about the funds of Union 
College much of which had been provided by the State, and the 
next year the Board of Regents made a decidedly formal and 
peremptory demand for a complete and specific accounting. The 
trustees denied the legal power of the Regents over any of their 
financial affairs. A great rumpus followed. The Legislature was 
in the midst of it. Most of the able men of the State had intel- 
lectual dissipation in it. It was four years after the Dartmouth 
College case in the United States Supreme Court and the con- 
troversy ranged over much of the same ground. Losing sight of 
how much State money the college had had and what had become 
of it, forgetting all about what the college needed and the obliga- 
tions of the State to it, forgetting the realities and magnifying 
the mere artificialities of the common life, the resolves and argu- 
ments and counter arguments dealt with officialism and preroga- 
tives, with constitutional intendments and limitations, with legisla- 
tive powers and purposes, with charter rights and the functions of 
common law visitors, and with divers other legal subtleties about 
which the great lawyers plume themselves. The broadaxes and 
the rapiers and some of the stilettos got into action. The legal 
reasoning was logical and skilful and it was embellished with 
innuendo, implication, invective and sarcasm, covered a little with 
the polite, insincere phrases of which many of the great lawyers 
of other days came to be past masters. Barring their infernal 
length and miserable print, the papers are a sort of literary and 
legal treat even now. The Legislature took refuge in referring 
them to the Attorney General, and adjourning. The Attorney 
General at the next session presented an able opinion in favor of 
the Regents. Then the judges that had been and were, wrote 



WHAT NEXT ABOUT UNION UNIVERSITY? 45 

elaborate opinions which had singular oneness of conclusion in 
favor of the trustees of the college. 

The college had apparently the better of the legal argument. 
Nothing escaped its able and distinguished advisers and every 
point was pressed clear home with all there was of legal learning 
and aggressiveness. But it established, as it seems to me, more 
than it was well to establish. It won a famous victory, and 
lost its finest opportunity. It established its independence not 
only of the Regents, but of the Legislature and of the State, and 
abandoned the strategic advantage which was easily within its 
reach. No more State money was ever appropriated to it. 

It is quite apparent that there was no ground for questioning 
the integrity of the trustees. They had been passing through a 
very hard time. It was a time for both dignity and conciliation. 
Their course illustrates the frequent unwisdom of standing upon 
the outer edge of legal rights. Regardless of technical legal 
rights, they should have reported about the State moneys to any 
one who would do them the favor of taking the information. 
When a question was raised about the integrity of the college 
management they should have stood in State street or upon the 
sand road and put a complete explanation in the hand of every 
passer-by. They and the Regents should have adjusted their 
differences in the interest of further moral and financial support 
for Union College and the interests for which it stood. They 
should have said, " We will meet every demand within our power 
if you will keep the appropriations abreast of the demands." 

Dartmouth College had just been prevented from becoming a 
state college by the reasoning of Webster and the determination 
of Marshall, and Union College after having become a state 
college in everything but name now abdicated the position for 
exactly the same reasons which prevailed in the Dartmouth case. 
The vital one was unwillingness to submit to any measure of state 
control. In the words of Mr Carlyle the " constitutions had not 
marched " then as they have since and the educational purpose of 
our free democracy had not had its development, if, indeed, it had. 
had its birth. 

I am not rash enough to infringe upon the exclusive rights of 
the sons of Union to deal with the struggles and triumphs and 
setbacks, the pranks and escapes and punishments, the loves and 
inspirations and idealities of the life of Union College. It is not 
necessary to go behind the record to find incidents which must 
have made the clouds thick and murky upon college hill, and 



46 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

other incidents which must have disposed the greatest of presi- 
dents to dance a hornpipe with the smallest of freshmen. They 
are to be reserved to the men who have the motive and the right 
to make them larger and rosier with each new telling. But 
there is one great factor in that life which is common property for 
it became a moral and intellectual asset of the nation. You antici- 
pate me for you know I refer to the great qualities and the un- 
paralleled presidency of Eliphalet Nott. 

Governor Seward wrote, on the fiftieth anniversary of the 
founding of the college, " I, too, am proud to be an alumnus of 
Union and a pupil of Nott," and Francis Wayland, himself a great 
college president, began the main address at the fiftieth anniver- 
sary of Dr Nott's presidency by saying " The reason of my ap- 
pearing before you may be briefly told. The man whom every 
graduate of Union loves as a friend and venerates as a parent 
thought proper to request me to perform this service." And the 
many other men, some of them great men, whose souls responded 
to the same sentiments, could hardly be counted. 

Nott's presidency extended through sixty-two years. But that 
is the least of it. His scholarship was deep and broad, both 
practical and classical. His generosity was unstinted and his 
sagacity matchless. He was a ready and forceful writer and so 
graceful in public speech as to become " The old man eloquent " 
of the college and the State. His piety was so pure and childlike 
as to save an undenominational college of fifty years ago from 
the charge of irreligion. The larger part of his administration 
was turbulent. Criticism was rife and it was not without occasion. 
He mingled college moneys with his own and commonly acted 
alone in the investment of the college funds and the management 
of the college business. If we know well enough that it was all 
wrong, there were few precedents then, the needs were imperative, 
and the boundless energy and devotion of the man led to results 
which could be gained in no other way. Criticism and implication 
were happily withdrawn at the end in the presence of the fact that 
all that he had, and it was quite a half million, went to the college. 
In the closing years of his great life his able, intellectual sons laid 
bare all the facts which a proud and honest spirit had refused to 
disclose, and wove together the indubitable proofs which con- 
vinced the world that his honor was as untarnished as his efficiency 
was brilliant and unquestioned. 

In this great career there were at least three factors which were 
the forerunners of a new type of college president and the makers 



WHAT NEXT ABOUT UNION UNIVERSITY? 47 

of a new kind of college in America. He had considerable me- 
chanical gift and was predisposed toward invention. If it led at 
times to catastrophe and humiliation, it took dogmatism and 
catechism out of his teaching and quickened it with illustration, 
demonstration and live human interest. He did more than any 
other of his generation to break out the roads towards the labora- 
tory methods in all branches and grades of instruction. He did 
what he could, and it was much, for better methods of teaching 
which have now come to be universally accepted. Beyond that, 
he actually liked real boys and, for a college president of his day, 
he was surprisingly bold in letting them know it. He did not 
overestimate the power of boys who are worth being reckoned with 
to absorb the abstractions of dogmatic theology, and he learned 
in the first year of his presidency that a college faculty is liable to 
be about the worst tribunal that was ever devised for dealing with a 
college boy in a scrape. The graduation examination was more 
to him than the entrance examination, and the power of a man 
to do the work was the evidence he wanted of the man's right to 
the opportunity to do it. Yet again, he had a conception of the 
democratic mission of the American college, of the differing kinds 
of work which it ought to do, of the differing classes of people 
which it ought to serve, and of the multifarious interests it was 
bound to promote, which had not obtained at any other seat of 
learning in America at that time. Putting all this with the quali- 
ties of the student who would be attracted by it, we may see 
something of the reason why so large a percentage of the early 
sons of Union College came to places of much conspicuity in the 
world. The students were resourceful, the management was 
paternal, the offerings were diverse, the instruction was adaptable, 
and the inspirations were for ends which ordinary young men 
might hope to gain. No one familiar with educational history can 
fail to see that here was a substantial breaking away from the 
aristocracy and exclusiveness, as well as the offerings, the methods, 
and the outlook of the English universities and their undeveloped 
prototypes in America. If it is too much to say that this breaking 
away was for a long time exclusively at Union, it is not too much 
to say that it was unprecedentedly, emphatically and most po- 
tentially there. And it has given irresistible trend to collegiate 
thinking and collegiate policies in America. It has done more 
than that ; it has developed the very distinct popular purpose to use 
the overwhelming political power of the third estate in our Re- 
public to maintain at the common cost higher institutions of learn- 



48 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

ing quite equal to any that are or are to be in the land. If not so, 
then this great result is the inevitable outworking of our democratic 
life, for, no matter whether one wills it or no, he who can not see 
it is blind to what is going on in the intellectual development of 
the country. 

The private gifts to the higher learning are so large and so many 
as to paralyze our credulity. What is the end to be ? Of one thing 
we may not doubt. What one can do in this land another will do. 
What one class or interest can do another class or interest will do. 
Equality of right and of opportunity is fundamental. It is more 
thoroughly understood and more rationally believed in now than 
when the Continental Congress proclaimed it. It extends to in- 
tellectual as well as personal, political and property rights. It 
does not seem hard to see that we are quickly coming to the time 
when in addition to a good elementary school close by every home 
and a good secondary school within walking or riding distance 
of every home, we shall have a great university, with all literary, 
scientific, technical and professional departments, established either 
by the money of the millionaire or by the state or the municipality, 
and free, or practically free, to whomsoever is qualified to do the 
work, within a hundred miles of every town. 

Educational values will be better understood and colleges and 
universities will be better classified and standardized. Measuring 
rods will be more exactly applied. The contents of the package 
will have to be set forth upon the wrapper. The college will have 
to do a specialized work. It will have to do what it assumes to do 
and do it as well as other colleges can do it, if it is to have credit 
and prestige. Colleges will learn, if they have not learned, that 
there is educational economy through combinations in universities. 
Patrons will see that there is advantage to students of parts from 
shuffling with the crowd, and that the aggregate of weaklings who 
come to naught or go to the bad is no less in the smaller institu- 
tions than in the larger ones. In any event, the circumstances of 
population, of living, of transportation, of the cost of plant, and of 
the extent of faculty, for the efficiency in higher education have 
settled the matter. The die is cast. Every considerable com- 
munity will have a university equal to its demands and pretty 
nearly free of cost to all who are prepared for its work and will 
come to take advantage of it. The history of the high school 
development is to be repeated. Communities that enter into the 
movement will find the advantage of it in their industrial, scientific, 
professional, and political life, and few will long be so perverse as 



WHAT NEXT ABOUT UNION UNIVERSITY? 49 

to be willing to lag behind the others. Each will want the best. 
The old-time theories of the aristocracy will have to go. They are 
nearly gone now. Fortunes that can find no other proper use, and 
the inevitable outworking of political power, have already given the 
trend and set the wheels in motion. Surely it will affect the older 
institutions. Their constituencies will not in the long run be so 
widely distributed. The supply of teachers from the older to the 
newer will turn back from the newer to the older. And the inexor- 
able law of nature which favors the son of toil rather than the 
illusioned son of wealth will prove its wisdom in the substance and 
the balance of democratic institutions and their steadily enlarging 
influence in all of the affairs of our great, round world. 

It may seem that I have wandered, but I have kept an end in 
view. I now bring this old college, with its history and its present 
situation, into this general field. With all of its history, lapping 
parts of three centuries, notwithstanding the fact that it was the 
first college chartered by the State and to all intents was once 
the State College, and notwithstanding the fact that it was the 
first college established in America westward of the Hudson river, 
and with its alumni filling places of honor and trust in every 
state, it is poor. New conditions and enlarged demands have 
grown up around it. It has not been able to keep in the lead of 
events. It has become associated with four institutions in this city 
in a nominal university. It is an arrangement of mutual con- 
venience. Each of those institutions has, as things go in this 
country, an ancient, and certainly each has an honorable, history. 
Would that I could have paid proper tribute to each. But neither 
has been able to give much of support to another or to the whole. 
All of these institutions are good, but poor. Each needs an en- 
dowment, the assured means of stronger support. In underpinning 
and superstructure each needs rejuvenation and strengthening. 
Each of these institutions needs to be put in circumstances which 
will enable it to give to and get from the others. The college 
needs to be reinforced and broadened if it is to continue to serve 
the ends of general culture or provide the training for business 
and social life, or supply the preparation for the technical and 
professional schools which they are bound to demand if they are to 
meet the demands which are coming — have already come, upon 
all professional schools. And the medical school and the law 
school and the technological school ought not only to require 
stronger general and scientific scholarship for admission, and look 
to the college to provide it, but they must present wider offerings, 



5<D NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

longer courses, larger laboratories, fuller equipment, and more 
teachers whose exclusive work is teaching, in order to do their 
professional work as well as, or better than, other professional 
schools are doing it. The association of professional schools with 
a literary and arts college in a university has been abundantly 
demonstrated to be highly desirable, and almost or quite a vital 
one. And of course the value of the whole depends upon the 
strength of the parts. Not only this but other schools need to be 
created for their own sake and for the sake of those already here. 

Union University has a situation which stirs envy in other insti- 
tutions. It is close by the capital of the first State in the Union. 
It is in a half dozen cities of nearly a half million people who, 
with the new means of transportation, are only a few minutes 
apart. For higher educational purposes they are really one com- 
munity. It is close by organized State educational activities like 
which there are none other in the country. It will soon find itself 
in the shadow of a great new building, the first in the country to 
be devoted exclusively to the intellectual interests of a state. It 
has access to one of the very great libraries of the nation which is 
soon to be very much greater. It is adjacent to the State Normal 
College which is about to be housed in a new, spacious and beauti- 
ful home, with facilities much expanded in many ways. It is in 
close association- with the oldest school of civil engineering in the 
country which has just been aided by a worthy woman with a 
munificent addition to its endowment. It has exceptional oppor- 
tunities for a great school of electrical, mechanical and sanitary 
engineering. It has not far to look for a historical and art in- 
stitute which might easily become the nucleus of a school of fine 
arts. All around it there are excellent public high schools and 
good private academies without number. All these institutions 
need college help, and can give help. It is in an environment 
which is historic, and ought to be and is able to be a center of 
education in the country. It is among a people of liberal means, 
some of whom might be disposed to save the transfer taxes upon 
the whole or a part of their estates by giving them over to an 
institution of learning really equal to the higher and diversified 
educational requirements of a community in which they have keen 
interest. 

In another twenty years there will probably be no city in the 
United States with a quarter of a million people which will permit 
itself to suffer the injustice of being without a university which shall 
provide general culture, specialize in some measure in the fine arts, 



WHAT NEXT ABOUT UNION UNIVERSITY? 51 

propagate the political sciences, supply thorough training for all 
of the professions and make practical application of the scientific 
knowledge of the world to all of the agricultural, constructive and 
manufacturing industries. 

In some way these cities and towns about the capital will have 
such a university. They will have an infinitely better university 
if they combine their resources and ingenuity. The necessary cost 
of plant and of operation is so great that either one of^these cities 
would make a profound mistake and surely meet with at least 
partial failure if it were to attempt to act alone. The logic of the 
situation, information which we all have, or which is at hand, and 
institutions of much worth which are already in our midst, point 
to the fact that these cities should combine in a university 
movement. 

Union College and the professional institutions associated with 
it can no longer hope to serve a widely distributed constituency. 
They will have sufficent burden and ample honor if they serve 
adequately the half million people or more who are within fifty 
miles of the New York State capital and if they represent these 
prosperous and intelligent communities as they are entitled to 
be represented upon the broad field of the higher learning in 
America. 

Now, let us avoid a misfortune by speaking of it. From the 
first step in the development of Union College there have been 
occasional movements for installing it at Albany. Because of my 
absence I know less of the latest of these movements than others 
do. But I probably risk little in saying that no resident of this 
city will be disposed to become sponsor for such a suggestion 
now. The growth and the circumstances of population have al- 
ready gone some distance and will speedily go much further in 
making that question of no practical concern. But there will be 
need of much readjustment and of adapting plans to situations 
which can be accomplished only by much concession and by readily 
opening the doors to new men and women, new influences and 
new movements. It is harder to organize a new scheme where 
there is a very respectable old one than where there is none at all. 
And it will be idle to move at all in this matter unless all who are 
interested are going to be disposed to take the situation as it is 
and act freely, without bias, prejudice or favor in making the 
most of it. But I entertain little doubt that if any interest should 
block the way of such a movement because of selfishness, that 
interest will find its own ends defeated, by the inevitable outwork- 
ing of the situation in the next twenty years. For even in ancient 



52 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

communities, the thing that ought to be in time finds its oppor- 
tunity and breaks its way through. 

I may have adrriitted, or assumed, or ventured more than the 
trustees and friends of the institutions in Union University would 
do. Even so, I have committed none but myself and I know full 
well that if my words do not generate much new energy they are 
not likely to produce very much harm. Wholly aside from what has 
been said it is very earnestly to be hoped that the cities of Albany, 
Troy, Schenectady, Hudson, Rensselaer, Cohoes and Watervliet 
and the prosperous villages above and below us upon the Hudson, 
and towards the Berkshires, up the valley of the Mohawk and out 
towards the headwaters of the Susquehanna may give their sincere 
and intelligent attention to the means for providing their people 
with adequate opportunities for the higher learning. These cities 
and towns ought to have a real university which they may justly 
call their own. It should be a university which can engage in all 
lines of research, be able to respond to every scientific need, and 
offer competent instruction in all branches of human learning. Its 
doors should swing freely to both men and women who are de- 
serving, who have completed the work of the secondary schools, 
and who want to go further. It should nourish the natural, pro- 
fessional, political, and industrial sciences, and conserve, while it 
enlarges, the intellectual estate of ancient communities and a his- 
toric situation. It could be done as economically and yet as 
potentially here as anywhere in the country. But to do it in any 
satisfactory measure even here it must have an equipment of build- 
ings and appliances which would be worth five millions of dollars 
and an endowment of ten millions or an assured and permanent 
income which would represent such an endowment. If such a uni- 
versity could be developed here it would be a crowning glory to a 
conspicuous and strategic situation, and if Union College, the Al- 
bany Medical College, the Albany Law School, and the Dudley 
Observatory could become the heart and core of such a university 
the fact would accord with the eternal fitness of things. 

It may be so if all who will it so will join hands to make it so. 

Look forward not back; 'tis the chant of creation, 
The chime of the seasons as onward they roll : 
'Tis the pulse of the world, 'tis the hope of the nation 
Tis the voice of our God in the depths of the soul. 

Lend a hand ! Like the sun that turns night into morning, 
The star that leads storm-driven sailors to land. 
Ah, life is worth living with this for the watchword — 
Look up, out, and forward, and each lend a hand. 



THE SCHOOLS AND INTERNATIONAL PEACE 

ADDRESS AT THE LAKE MOHONK CONFERENCE ON INTERNATIONAL 
ARBITRATION MAY 23, I907 

Mr President: 

As a mere matter of prudence, my admission and your obser- 
vation of the fact that this is my first appearance at a peace confer- 
ence may well be coincident. 

I am expected to treat of what the schools may do to promote 
the peace of the world. That involves my understanding of the 
basis of world peace. If I can not have a confident philosophy 
about that I can not rationally think of the relations which the 
schools ought to sustain to it. It is a subject about which there 
is not a little mystery and not a little divergent philosophy. If 
the newspapers are correctly informing, even the past masters are 
not at all times at peace in peace conferences. 

Never, since the angels first proclaimed " On earth peace ; good 
will toward men," has the hope of universal peace and good will 
seemed so assuring. It is because of the outworking of the New 
Power which the angels then heralded in the affairs of men. But 
the peace and good will were not to be without heavy conflict. 
Christ said, " I came not to send peace, but a sword." The sword 
was to be the necessary forerunner of peace. Repeatedly He fore- 
told the horrors which were to follow the unfolding of the new 
gospel. Prophecy has been realized in fact. The theology or the 
spirituality of it I have not the training to exploit. Doubtless 
some professor of theology will tell us that the obvious meaning 
is not the real meaning of the statement. The Lord probably had 
no conception of modern theological interpretation : most 
assuredly I have none. 

I think I have some understanding of the history which has 
followed since the statement was made and that fixes my attitude 
of mind. A new king came into human life. True, He was a 
heavenly king. He regarded not the kings of the earth, but they 
had to regard Him. He gained followers at once and together 
they propagated a philosophy and pursued a course which defied 
monarchs. The monarchs resisted, and harrassed them but they 
gained great numbers and became a great force. They stirred the 
thinking as well as the feelings of great peoples. All peoples lived 
in subjection to kings. The power of the kings was in the 

S3 



54 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

unthinking obedience of their subjects. The only argument was 
brute force. But conviction and faith could not be abashed by 
physical force. The new religion was as intellectual as spiritual. 
Nations were actually set in motion. It widened knowledge and 
sharpened mentality. Men and women had to think for themselves, 
and then their thinking was unlike. Creeds began to be framed 
and the drawing and the defense of them made for logical thinking 
and trained intellectuality. With added numbers and hardening 
creeds and deepening faith, and with all this opposed by nothing 
but brute force, aggression was natural and conflict inevitable. 
Armies broke out the road over which freedom and the truth could 
advance to the making of a new order of things. 

The crusades did a little something for the central European 
nations in the early centuries, like what modern invention and 
travel have been doing in our century. The compounding of a 
new nation in Britain a thousand years ago did something more. 
The discovery of America, the consequent Spanish dreams of world 
empire and the expulsion of Spain from the Netherlands did even 
more, and the German, and English, and American, and French 
revolutions — all sequential — did yet more. And the compound- 
ing of yet another nation in America, which has practically 
demonstrated the possibility of secure and aggressive popular 
government, with the sense of moral right and the political pre- 
science which could locate the point of equipoise between liberty 
and security, has stridden toward the climax of universal peace 
more decisively than all before. It has all been associated with 
intellectual virility and moral advances. Schools and universities 
and literatures and philosophies and systems of laws and profes- 
sional spirit and learning, and endless devices and conveniences 
which are the product of the fact that individualism is having its 
chance in the world, — all this is the logical unfolding of a mighty 
plan which was beyond the ordering of men. 

It has all been marked by force — the rational and regulated 
force of the mass controlling the greedy, impulsive, vicious power 
of the chieftan or the clan. It was impossible without physical 
force, and the force of the Christian peoples was as righteous as 
the thinking which called it into operation. Gustavus Adolphus 
and William of Nassau are as much entitled to the regard of a 
peace conference as is Luther. Cromwell should be as justly 
honored here as Stratford and Sir Harry Vane. Washington's 
army was as moral a force as the Continental Congress, whose 
Declaration of Independence it made good. Lincoln's armies were 



THE SCHOOLS AND INTERNATIONAL PEACE 55 

as righteous as the Constitution which required Lincoln to gather 
such forces as were necessary to execute the laws in all parts of 
the land. The heroic doings of the men and women who made 
our free democracy possible and proved its power to govern, and 
therefore its right to be, are moral assets of the nation and moral 
stimulants in the schools. The obligation of this generation to 
impress all this upon the next generation is as binding as the 
eternal truth itself, and as sacred as a vicarious grave. 

Constitutionalism is the corner stone of the peace of the nations, 
and it will have to be of the peace of the world. It has been 
expanded through armed resistance to brutal aggression. It has 
not yet gone so far as to do away completely with the further 
necessity of force ; it has not made the struggles which were the 
conditions of its birth seem wicked; it has not put a ban upon 
present and future aggressiveness. What it has done has been 
to define and assure natural rights by subordinating force to law. 
It has established courts to determine disputes upon principles 
which have sprung out of the wisdom of the ages, and it has 
created officers and forces who, in a systematic and authoritative 
way, bring the physical strength of all good citizens when need be 
to protect the rights of good and bad. 

Some men and some nations want anything but law and anything 
but the lawful exercise of the common authority against them. 
Such men in a political society have to be controlled ; such nations 
have to be enlightened. It remains to be seen whether the prin- 
ciple that the constitutional nations are to exercise control over 
lawless ones is to prevail throughout the world, — and if so, in 
what cases? 

I dissent from any doctrine which would make men insipid. If 
a felon breaks into my house the law expects me to resist him, and 
if I think I am in peril — as I will think if I am not unusually 
stupid — the law approves of my killing him. That is not only 
because my house is my castle, but to the end that other felons 
may know what to expect. If I see a brutal and irresponsible 
scoundrel strike a woman in the street, I am a weak character and 
a worthless citizen if I do not employ whatever strength I may 
have to protect her. The law would shield her, and it not only 
expects all good citizens to aid it but, in the absence of its 
authorized officers, to execute it as best they can. It required 
thousands of years to establish in the law the principle that all 
decent people must stand for the security and the opportunity of 
each, and each for the good of all. It has now become firmly 



56 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

established in all well-ordered countries. It will be no small matter 
to make it a virile and accepted principle governing the conduct 
and the relations of nations. It was left for democracy to give 
it its opportunity. The rescue of Cuba from Spain by the United 
States, not for gain, much against our interest, and only because 
it was right, has supplied the object lesson which good inter- 
national teaching needs, and it has exemplified a principle which 
is vital to world progress. 

It is perhaps too much to expect that nations will bind 
themselves in advance to accept the determinations of an inter- 
national tribunal. That may be parting with sovereignty, — the 
one thing that nations can not do. But the very fact of partici- 
pating in setting up an international tribunal establishes the 
purpose to respect it. The very fact of submitting a case to it 
proves the expectation to abide its determination. Nations which 
take these solemn steps and then repudiate them, without assigning 
a reason which commends itself to the sense of the world, will 
forfeit the international respect which is alike vital to the standing 
and the strength of nations, and without which they are little to 
be feared. 

The nations have come to live so closely together; the news of 
the world is so widely and quickly known; the mind of the world 
is so enlightened, the moral sense so strong, the principles of jus- 
tice so widely and firmly established, and, withal, war has become 
so mechanical and abhorrent, that it does seem as though there 
should be sufficient agreement among the more progressive nations 
to establish some substantial form of constitutional procedure 
between as well as within the nations. It at least ought to go so 
far as to prevent aggressive warfare without just cause, or, even 
with just cause, without imperative need. But I am not prepared 
to oppose all warfare. The deliberate thought of an enlightened 
people surely ought to have its way after every other alternative 
has failed. 

I feel bound now to qualify my expressions as to the need of 
force to uphold law and maintain sovereignty. I do not agree 
to the endless accretion of idle armament and unusable forces. 
The educative influence of it is bad ; the surplusage of it is exactly 
opposed to the only legitimate purpose of it. 

It would seem that any general and efficient scheme for settling 
international controversies must depend upon — (a) ripening 
public sentiment, (b) a permanent court of such exalted character 
that no people with a just cause would fear its determinations, and 



THE SCHOOLS AND INTERNATIONAL PEACE 57 

(c) a written and steadily augmenting code of legal principles which 
ought to govern international conduct, both in peace and war. 

The sentiment is crystallizing; the forerunner of the court is 
already in being and the permanent court seems likely; the code 
has augmented slowly while its only opportunity was through 
agreements in treaties or precedents, but it will be more rapidly 
expanded when there is a place to submit issues and when 
determinations are more frequent. 

This is what I would like to aid, and therefore what I would 
be glad to have the schools promote. It is often easier to exploit 
propositions when one has no official responsibility about them. 
It is sometimes disconcerting to be fettered by facts and burdened 
by responsibility. This question would probably be answered more 
to the delight of an enthusiastic conference by one who has no 
official responsibility about the schools, or by one who has not 
been in a school since childhood — which may have been as much 
as ten or twelve years ago. Now, no one should take offense at 
that, for you doubtless all know as much about schools as I do 
about peace. 

There are schools in all countries. With this conference in mind 
I have caused a careful investigation to be made as to the number 
of teachers in the world. The figures surprise me. There are 
150,000 in Austria-Hungary; as many more in France; 232,000 
in Germany; 275,000 in the British Isles ; 97,000 in Italy and 30,000 
in the Netherlands; 180,000 in Russia; 18,000 in Sweden, and 
13,000 in Switzerland ; a full half million in India ; 120,000 in Japan ; 
30,000 in Canada ; and 580,000 in the United States. All the other 
countries, civilized or semicivilized, have their fair proportions. 
There are clearly more than 3,500,000 in all. 

It is a great guild. There is no such widely distributed 
fraternity in the world. Of course there are all kinds in it, but 
they have much in common. It is their business to differ and their 
delight to discuss, but their work brings them into accord upon 
the essentials of right living and of international comity and broth- 
erhood. I doubt not the predisposition of the overwhelming 
number, and if in some way they could be quickened to use their 
quiet, steady and indirect influences to substitute rational deter- 
minations for the arbitrament of the sword in settling international 
disputes, it would have a telling effect upon the sentiment of the 
world. It would seem as though, with a little governmental favor, 
official records, and our free communication, there might be a 
somewhat systematic and potential canvass of the teachers of the 



58 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

world in the interest of universal good will and of the common 
regard for definable moral standards which ought to be inviolable 
in both individual and international conduct. 

For example, let it be understood that one nation will not be 
allowed to despoil another for the sake of empire or other greed, 
because it is immoral, and the ordinary motive of aggressive war- 
fare will have disappeared. For example, again, if it could be 
realized that all men and all governments are responsible to one 
another for the security of each and the opportunity of all; that 
all government is necessarily a burden, and that each must carry 
his part of the burden according to strength, the consequent 
feeling of comradeship in effort would become an impenetrable 
barrier to unholy war. The teachers of the world might, through 
an organized movement, become a very great force in doing all 
this. More thoroughly educated concerning it themselves, they 
would, at least by the indirect influence — which is often more 
telling than the direct, propagate it in all parts of the earth. 

The universities may well be counted upon to give point, form 
and expression to the better sentiment of all countries in this 
behalf. It has a proper place in their offerings; it is attractive to 
their advanced students, and their teaching is bound to give oppor- 
tunity and impetus to this good movement. Their research and 
their publications may well be expected to illumine and soundly 
expand the law of the State, and the manifest and growing comity 
between the universities of the more enlightened and powerful 
nations ought to open the way for the extension of constitu- 
tionalism to the vital issues which are inevitable in international 
relations. It is particularly so since the better schools of law 
are in organic association with universities, and more particularly 
still it is so since the experts in the universities are coming to be 
the best , equipped advisers of nations upon technical points in 
serious international disputes. 

The work of the colleges, and in some measure that of the 
secondary schools, may well anticipate that of the professional 
schools and the universities in this as in other matters. The phases 
of it which may properly form a part of the work of the elementary 
schools are not obvious. It must be said frequently that it is high 
time that we stopped clogging the curricula of the lower schools 
with so much that pupils may learn in one tenth of the time when 
the place for it is reached — if, indeed, there is any place for it at 
all. If we teach the elements of knowledge and exemplify the 
elements of good morals in the primary schools, we shall not be 



THE SCHOOLS AND INTERNATIONAL PEACE 59 

censured if we omit constitutional law, political history, and 
international arbitration. 

Of course there should be nothing in the schools to distort 
the understanding- or obscure the outlook of children. It has 
often been said in peace conferences that the textbooks in the 
schools emphasize the triumphs of strife rather than the struggles 
and accomplishments of peace. It does not seem so to me. We 
can not expect the textbooks to be prepared without reference 
to human interest. The news and magazine writers ought not to 
criticize them for that. The readers and histories and geographies, 
in the texts and the illustrations, seem to me to exemplify very 
fairly the struggles and progress of all of the interests of peace 
in all parts of the world. The literature used by the schools is 
the best in the world, infinitely more choice than ever before. It 
is not the literature of strife so much as of peace, work, and cul- 
ture. One who is advocating a particular thing is hardly likely 
to be an unbiased judge when his special enthusiasm is involved. 
In recent years there is distinctly discernible in school literature 
a new purpose to magnify accomplishments in the arts and sciences, 
rather than the triumphs of armies. And we had better not forget. 
History must be written truly. The boys who have ginger in 
them will have to know what has happened; they will have their 
opportunity; they will draw conclusions for themselves. The 
work of the schools makes for independent and virile thinking 
within the limits which hard facts impose, and therefore for bal- 
anced manliness and womanliness, more than ever before in human 
history. 

We are frequently asked to set aside a day or an hour for 
exercises to promote this, that, or the other cause in the schools. 
The cause is generally a worthy one. Sometimes it is one about 
which patrons of the school will differ. It may have reference 
to trees or to birds, to Bible reading, or temperance, or woman 
suffrage, or athletics, or to memorials of soldiers, or tributes to 
authors, or to spelling in new ways, or to professors practising 
on guinea pigs, or to the bad influences of automobiles upon the 
wretches who run them, or to raising funds to be used in searching 
for the North Pole. I do not think these things as important as 
world peace, but there are misguided people who do. And it must 
be said, with sadness, that they are very aggressive and seem 
to have no care for peace at all. It can not all be done. Very 
little of it ought to be done. It is not the business of the schools 
to promote special causes. If attempted, it is impossible of sue- 



60 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

cess without special programs and instructions, which cost time, 
money and labor. It is a good deal of a matter to interfere with 
the regular order in the thirty thousand schools in this State, for 
example. In private schools the authorities may do what they 
will about any such matter. In public schools the local authorities 
may do almost anything, not repugnant to law, that the general 
sentiment of the place will sustain. But the school authorities 
of an American state are not expected to promote particular causes 
outside the accepted functions of the schools, without the special 
sanction of law. A state school officer is only an administrative 
or executive officer. He does not own the schools. He is not 
to interfere too much with local rule either affirmatively or nega- 
tively. He acts for all. He acts only in matters common to all 
and pursuant to the will of at least the majority. If the people 
of the state want anything done in all the schools, and it is not 
being done, they will be likely to write it in the law so that the 
officers who may cause it to be done for them may know definitely 
what they want. 

In a concluding word, the mind and heart of the world cherish 
good will and abhor war. But natural rights are cherished more 
than peace and they will be maintained even though conflicts 
ensue. In well ordered life rights are ordinarily maintained and 
conflicts are avoided by the submission of good citizens to the 
rule of law by submitting disputes to the decisions of courts, and 
by using the common power to punish the undesirable citizens. 
States which are sane enough and strong enough for this naturally 
come into agreeable relations with other states of like character. 
Commonly that is enough. But there are men and nations who 
prefer to be outlaws ; and there are men and nations with no 
inclinations towards outlawry who have differences that can not 
be settled by discussion and agreement. Moreover, men and 
women do not separate into nations upon moral lines. Without 
much reference to causes, some in all nations would have conflict 
for the mere sake of conflict, or for a mere show of strength and 
the power to bully; some would avoid conflict at any cost; and 
some believe that force is never necessary to the maintenance of 
just principles. We have to deal with common opinion and with 
prevalent conditions. Differences between men will continue to 
arise and they will be settled by conciliation, by arbitration, by 
judicial determination, or by force. The more serious differences 
between nations, as well as between men, will have to be settled 
in one of these ways. Many of the differences between nations 



THE SCHOOLS AND INTERNATIONAL PEACE 6l 

are settled by discussion, and we hear little of them. Some are 
settled by arbitration, to the avoidance of many wars. But inter- 
national arbitration of aggravated disputes is not much to be 
relied upon except between the most enlightened nations having 
predominant moral sense. Settlement by law will be the surer, 
but it depends upon common sentiment, upon some kind of con- 
tinuing agreement, upon principles being reduced to form, upon 
an established and satisfying tribunal, upon recognized practice 
for joining issues and proceeding to determinations, and upon 
the extent of the understanding that the nations will submit to it 
themselves and support its judgments in all parts of the world. 

This is international constitutionalism. It is constitutionalism 
in its fullest flower. Arbitration may avoid war; constitutionalism 
is a system reasonably certain to avoid war. Even more, it is 
forehanded, it is the object lesson, it is educative, it quickens 
initiative and it opens opportunity to the best impulses of all people 
in all the nations. The schools, particularly the schools of the 
masses out of whose freedom constitutionalism has always sprung, 
can ill afford to have no part in helping it on. But it must be 
a part which is neither sporadic nor spasmodic, neither memorized 
nor mechanical. It must spring out of that impulse and grasp 
which provide the background of all substantial accomplishment; 
it must proceed from impulse to result with due regard to the 
basis upon which the schools rest and all of the other interests 
which center in them. And that must come through the thinking 
of the teachers, rather than the mechanism of the schools. 



THE AMERICAN TYPE OF UNIVERSITY 

COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS AT SYRACUSE .UNIVERSITY, JUNE 12, I907 

Mr Chancellor, and Ladies and Gentlemen, and, more particularly, 
you Young Men and Women of the Class of ipo?: 

There is no more fascinating, indeed no more exhilarating, 
spectacle than a commencement scene in an American university, 
on a clear and bracing morning in the rosy month of June. 

It is not only the hour when an eager and ambitious class — 
justly proud of substantial intellectual accomplishments, with the 
proper confidence which comes of very considerable intellectual 
discipline, truly courageous and sanely idealistic through much 
contact with the very best in human life — receives the standard 
stamp of approbation and commendation which the best scholar- 
ship can give ; but it is also the hour when the university comes 
out into the open and presents to the activities of actual life the 
finest new energies which it can generate and train. 

There are universities — and many of them — in other countries 
which never have commencements. They give credits for work 
done, and when one has enough credits he exchanges them for a 
degree. I say he because the women have little or nothing to do 
with it. The whole thing is as guiltless of ideality, of imagination, 
of incentive, of spirit in any form, as the building of a canal boat 
or the buying of a pair of shoes. There are universities in this 
country which have inherited so much from the universities of 
the old countries that they are able to understand the spirit and 
meet the educational needs of the United States only with the 
greatest difficulty and only in the most apprehensive, ponderous, 
and distressing kind of way. And there are universities in all 
countries which have inbred so much, which are so self-satisfied, 
which have got so much transmitted " culture " which did not 
come through heavy work, that they are innocently unjust and 
necessarily unfair to the people upon whom they must depend 
for the continuous reinforcement of virile life. There is a scholar- 
ship so unemotional as to be gloomy, so aristocratic as to be 
useless, so " cultured " as to be insipid, so cynical as to be tor- 
menting; but scholarship of the modern type in America has little 
in common with it. 

The great fact that makes a university commencement in our 

62 



THE AMERICAN TYPE OF UNIVERSITY 63 

country of such absorbing popular interest is that it is the annual 
occasion of an American university. The world sees, if willing to 
see, a new type of university in this country in the last half cen- 
tury. Let us inquire, with necessary brevity, how it has come to 
be, and what are the features which distinguish it. 

All of the older social systems of the world, no matter how 
proficient in political philosophy or in the arts and sciences of 
civilization, have shown a distinct cleavage between the upper 
and the nether classes. The names of things have been different 
in different countries and the things themselves have had all 
manner of forms and colorings, but the fact has been wellnigh 
universal that there have been two great classes and that a small 
higher class has ruled a much larger lower class. As universally 
as this has been true, the universities have been the creations and 
have reflected the outlook and executed the purposes of the 
higher class. The outlook of the higher class has seldom caught 
a glimpse of the wisdom of giving every one his chance, and the 
self-interest of that class has never been much tempered by anxiety 
for widely diffusing a universal learning. The change has come 
through the fact that in this country the larger class is having 
something to say about it. 

Until in our country, and practically in our time, the university 
has stood for some manner of exclusiveness. It may have been 
for a monarch and what he implies; it may have been for a more 
or less constitutional state ; it may have been for a church ; it 
may have been for a profession or a guild : never, until now and 
here, has it stood for all learning and for all the people. 

This was almost as true of early American as of foreign colleges 
or universities. We too often forget — if, indeed, we have ever 
realized — that our American democracy, with its great elements 
of toleration, equality before the law, free right of opportunity 
for all, no special privileges, and with its public institutions of 
equal service to all, did not all at once come full-fledged into the 
world by the migration of a few thousand people of well settled 
notions across the sea. The common thought and the social and 
institutional life of the old world persisted in the new world. Har- 
vard, William and Mary, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Pennsylvania, 
Rutgers, Brown, Dartmouth, all stood for aristocracy in the state, 
for denominationalism in religion, and for a learning which was 
exclusively culturing and professional. They never dreamed of 
uplifting the common people or of applying scientific research to 
the industries of the country. 



64 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

It does not signify any lack of appreciation of the great qualities 
which the early settlers brought to this country, to say that the 
dominant and distinguishing thought of the nation has come from 
the compounding of a new nation out of pretty nearly all kinds 
of people in the world. The very necessities of the situation have 
broken down all general distinctions between classes and brought 
forth a national political philosophy with a universal freedom of 
initiative and a popular efficiency in consummation which the 
world has never seen before. It is this which has made a new 
manner of university. It has remodeled the earlier universities 
and it has brought very quickly into vigorous life many powerful 
institutions which stand for the universal purpose to promote the 
universal good. Some of them have resulted from the benefac- 
tions of a man of wealth, some from the leadership of a great 
executive and the work and love of a multitude of others who 
had little besides work and love to give, and some through the 
popular determination working through the political machinery 
of the state. But all have had to appeal to a constituency which 
was wider than any class, or sect, or party, and such as have been 
able to meet the needs of such a constituency have found over- 
whelming support and response to their ability to do it. 

It is interesting to note that the university development has been 
strongest where our democracy has been the freest. As new 
states were settled to the westward by a people who lacked little 
in moral purpose and nothing in initiative or in courage, they 
not only took good care of an elementary school system but com- 
monly provided for a state university in their new constitutions. 
The older states could not do that when they were organized 
because neither legal opportunity, nor political philosophy, nor 
educational theory, nor the force of popular initiative were up to 
the point of doing it at that time. And the lead in freedom and 
in force of popular initiative which the newer states gained from 
the fulness of their opportunity, they seem likely to hold. They 
are certainly diffusing the higher learning more completely among 
all the people without regard to heredity or wealth than any other 
people in the world. They have established proprietorship in a 
universal school system of sixteen grades, beginning with the 
kindergarten and continuing along a smooth and unbroken road 
up to and through the university, which is unique in the history 
of education. They see, as most of us in the east do not see, that 
the logical educational result of our fundamental political theory, 
that every child of the republic shall have equality of opportunity, 



THE AMERICAN TYPE OF UNIVERSITY 65 

leads to a university so free at least that no one who is prepared 
for it and aspires to it shall fail to get it only because he lacks 
the money to pay the cost. It is as inevitable as the natural out- 
working of our political philosophy is certain that this ideal will 
obtain in the course of time wherever the presence of the flag of 
the Union determines the educational policy of a people. 

When it was settled that we were to have a universal public 
high school system all over this country, it was practically settled 
that we should have a public university system as well. One thing 
in intellectual evolution and educational opportunity accomplished 
in America, another thing — and a higher thing — will follow 
almost as a matter of course. If one asks where it is to end, the 
answer must be " I do not know." The hereafter ought to have 
some things to settle, and that is one of them. 

The building of public high schools made it certain that the 
colleges already established would have to forego much of their 
exclusiveness and that there would be new colleges and groups 
of colleges in which the control would not be with any class. 

The great difficulty with the systems of education in other lands 
is not that they have no elementary school system. They very 
generally have excellent ones. Attempting less than we do in 
the primary schools, they sometimes do it better than we do; and, 
better still, they have less difficulty than we do in making every 
child attend upon the instruction provided for him. Nor is the 
difficulty that they have no university system. Very generally 
they have an excellent one, from which we have much to learn. 
The difficulty is that there is no connecting link between the two, 
and that it is not intended that there shall be one. There is not 
only no continuous road from one to the other, but there are 
insurmountable barriers between them. The universities serve an 
exclusive class, and no matter how educationally entitled a child 
of the masses may be, it is difficult, almost to the point of pro- 
hibition, for him to secure the advantages of the advanced 
schools. 

That is the thing which the fundamental political philosophy 
and the deliberate democratic purpose of this country are obvi- 
ating. It is not that any of us are against all the exclusiveness 
that anybody wants in his private or family life. We all want 
some of that ourselves ; it is a matter of temperament, of con- 
geniality, of experience and of taste, and in personal affairs these 
are to have their way; but the public policy of the country will 
give every one his public chance, his equal opportunity — at least 



66 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

so far as the common wealth and the common political power are 
used to create individual opportunity at all. 

Happily, the high school movement in America has proved to 
be a great disorganizer of classes, as well as a great help to the 
diffusion of higher learning. It has made men and women of all 
classes know each other better and regard each other more. It 
has gained and retained the interest of many of quick mentality, 
marked business success, and newly acquired wealth in popular 
education. It has been the secret spring of many a great gift to 
a university, and of much munificence for the common good. 

And, whatever else it has done, it has created an overwhelming 
influence for the development of universities and for determining 
the essential features of new universities in America. There was 
reason for the earliest and most decisive manifestation of this 
movement in the newer states. There were no old-line academies 
and colleges there to stand in the way of it. The settlers were 
of the finest New York and New England stock : they knew about 
the very best in education. The parents were ready to lay down 
their all, even their lives, for their children ; and they had a clear 
field. Of course, with such a people the schoolhouse became 
the most conspicuous building in the pioneer village, and of 
course a little " college " sprang up in every considerable town. 
Of course, again, with such a people the public high school had 
its quickest and perhaps its most luxuriant development. The 
sooner the high school became a fact the sooner higher education 
became a passion. When the federal land grants were made to 
higher education in all the states, right at the darkest hour in 
the Civil War, the eastern states hardly knew about them at all, 
and have never made more than perfunctory and indifferent use 
of them, while the western states have seized them with avidity, 
put them to their utmost possibilities, added to them from ten to 
a hundredfold, and cry for more with an eagerness and an 
audacity that would have made young Oliver Twist a veritable 
hero. 

And these federal land grants in themselves have had much to 
do in fixing the predominant type of university in America. With 
them, with the complete recognition of the principle that it is 
within the functions of a democratic state to do — or to delegate 
the legal power to do — whatsoever the people want to do for 
learning, and with general education boards with millions at their 
disposal every year for the higher institutions, it is not difficult 
to see that the colleges and universities in America which will 



THE AMERICAN TYPE OF UNIVERSITY 67 

endure will minister to all the people, without reference to their 
means, and will promote every phase of honorable endeavor 
without regard to class or station. 

Let it not be inferred that the typical American university is, 
or is to be, the poor man's university. It is not to be burdened 
with any qualifying adjectives. It is to be the rich man's and 
the poor man's alike. Its strength is, and is to be, in the fact 
that it is representative of the common life. It is to be no more 
exclusive than the constitution of the country is exclusive, save 
upon the one point of ability to do its work. It brings rich and 
poor, men and women, together upon the basis of advanced schol- 
arship, and it gives intellect an opportunity which is distinctly 
higher and nobler than any that can follow the mere accidents 
of birth or the mere incidents of life. 

No university can be a real or an effective American university 
and follow the exclusive educational ideals of other countries and 
other times. A new nation has been compounded in this country 
out of people from all social, industrial, political and moral con- 
ditions in the world. That nation is working out its own salva- 
tion. It is doing it upon lines that are peculiar to itself. I think 
it is doing it safely and effectually. The net result will be the 
freest and the finest uplift to the intellectual and moral state of 
men and women that the world has ever seen. This thing is, not 
only going through this nation, but, largely through the instru- 
mentality of this nation, it is going through the world. It must, 
of necessity, create instrumentalities which are peculiarly its own. 
Above all, its educational institutions of the first rank, which must 
regulate the ebb and flow of the nation's best and truest thought, 
can not be limited by ideals which had reached their zenith before 
our nation was born and before our political science had begun 
to make its revolutionary impressions upon the thinking and the 
destiny of mankind. Nor, indeed, can we be limited by conditions 
which prevail at this time in other nations and their institutions. 
Without, by any means, descending to the low level of declaring 
that things in this country are better than things in other coun- 
tries only because they are in this country, and cheerfully recog- 
nizing the vastness of the knowledge we are yet to gain from 
other lands, I dare make the declaration, in words that will leave 
little to be misunderstood, that we can not follow the British 
university, with its narrow, purely classical and purely English 
scholarship, which is studiously prevented from being broadened 
by that fatuous policy of the ruling classes which stubbornly 



68 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

refuses the organization of all secondary schools through which 
the only people who can broaden it may come to the universities 
at all. We can not accept the scheme of the French universities, 
overbalanced as they are with the mechanical and the imaginative, 
and dominated by the martial feeling and the military organization 
of a people who need the opportunity of thinking freely above 
all other things. Nor can we copy the German university, which 
puts the scientific method first, regards sound morals but little, 
and conveniently absolves itself from all responsibility about the 
character of its students, so long as they can use a microscope 
to magnify the strength of the empire. And if we can not be 
guided by the English or French or German universities, we can 
not be guided by any. We will take and we will leave whatever 
will serve our ends either by taking or leaving. We will build 
up institutions which make for scholarship, for freedom and for 
character, and which, withal, will look through American eyes upon 
questions of political policy, and train American hands to deftness 
in the constructive and manufacturing industries of most concern 
to the United States. 

There has been no more noteworthy or promising development 
in our intellectual, political, or industrial life than the flocking of 
students in recent years to the universities which show a rational 
appreciation of the educational demands of our American life, 
and a reasonable disposition to meet the needs of the educational 
situation. Even where a university is not situated in a large city 
and is not sustained by an attendance which will go somewhere and 
can go nowhere else, it has stood in no need of students or of 
support if it could enter into the spirit of the Republic and would 
offer sound instruction which had some human interest and some 
real bearing upon practical training for our own professional and 
industrial life. 

A mere English or culturing training, no matter how excellent 
and necessary a thing in itself, is no longer a preparation for 
the professions. The legal profession demands that and also 
a great and varied special library ; a knowledge of legal history 
and theory; certainty about the statutes and the decisions- apt- 
ness at associating all in a comprehensive and logical whole, and 
readiness at applying the correct parts to new cases. It requires 
years of study under expert and practical teachers, with ample 
accommodations, in a special school, almost necessarily associated 
with a university. Medicine claims the English training, and then 
exacts years of research in chemistry, zoology, bacteriology, physi- 



THE AMERICAN TYPE OF UNIVERSITY 69 

ology and other fundamental and kindred sciences, requiring great 
laboratories and costly equipment which can hardly be provided 
at all outside of the great universities. After that, the theory 
and practice specially appertaining to the profession must have 
a special school, and again almost necessarily, one associated 
with a university. It is the same with architecture, and engineer- 
ing, and agriculture, and all the professional and industrial ac- 
tivities of the country. It is even largely so with the fine arts. 
All demand the libraries, and laboratories, and drafting rooms, 
and shops, and athletic grounds, and gymnasiums, and kitchens, 
and all the other things which only the large universities can 
provide, and all students do their own work more happily and 
absorb much from the work of the others when they get their 
training in association with the crowd in the university. Wherever 
the university offers all these things, there the students gather; 
there thought is free — but is very liable to have the conceits 
taken out of its freedom ; there the actual doing outweighs the 
mere talk; there practical research cuts dogmatism to the bone; 
there honest work has its reward, and pretense its quick con- 
demnation ; there men and women measure up for what they are 
rather than for what they claim; there inspiration is given to every 
proper ambition, and there a great and true American university 
develops. 

All this has led to some very sharp differentiation between the 
external forms and the manner of government and the plan of 
work of American and foreign universities. For example, the 
board of trustees is largely peculiar to American universities. It 
stands for the mass in university government and policy. On the 
other side of the sea there is no mass in university affairs. Charters 
run in the name of the king; the king is the head of the univer- 
sity, as of the state; and the king, or the king's minister, deter- 
mines the course the university is to pursue. The early American 
colleges were all chartered by the king; even Parliament had no 
part in the matter. In the midst of the revolution, just following 
the defeat of St Leger at Oriskany, of Clinton in his movement 
up the Hudson, and of Burgoyne at Saratoga, when neither king 
nor Parliament were much in vogue in New York, and when -a 
petition was presented to the young state government for the 
chartering of Union College, there was not a little embarrassment 
as to whether it should be addressed to the Governor or to the 
Legislature, and as to which should deal with it. Yankee ingenuity 
met the difficulty by addressing the prayer to both, and statecraft 



JO NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

split the difference by creating the Board of Regents to deal with 
such matters. But, however chartered, the board of trustees stands 
for the donors, the creators and the public, in giving trend to the 
course of the university. The point of it is that the founders, 
either the donors or the public, or both, are represented in the 
matter. 

There is no office like our presidency in foreign universities. The 
reason for this appears in the fact that there is no faculty to be 
gathered, assimilated, partly eliminated, reinforced, and dealt with, 
according to our usage. The reason for this is that the intellectual 
provender is provided upon the European rather than upon the 
American plan. You pay for what you get, rather than pay for 
everything and then take what you like. The charges are for 
single courses. The professor gets the fees. The thing works 
automatically. If he can not teach he lacks students and soon 
obliterates himself. So far it is well. If another comes along who 
can gather students, he is welcome. There is something to be 
said for the system, but it lacks comprehensiveness, grasp, and 
the strength to bear responsibility for the balanced training of 
youth and the harmonious evolution of character. It will suffice 
where the institution has no care about intellectual balance or 
morals, and therefore it will not do in this country. The office of 
president holds things together, makes the parts fit into each other, 
stands for the public, the trustees, the teachers, the parents and the 
students, and carries the whole forward to the great ends for which 
a wealth of money, and of holy effort, and of the world's wisdom, has 
been put into it. And there is nothing clearer than that the univer- 
sity flourishes, that is, that the purposes of all that centers in the 
creation are most completely accomplished, when it has a sane 
and capable all-around executive who can mark out a good way 
and has will enough to make it go. 

The early American colleges, copied upon foreign prototypes, 
have had to do so much readjusting that their old friends would 
not recognize them, and the ones which came a little later have 
naturally been created to fit a situation and fall in with a very 
general order. From now on they will not be able, and probably 
they will not be disposed, to dominate university policy in the 
United States. They will be obliged to work in accord with the 
overwhelming number of universities, colleges and secondary 
schools taken together. They will have to accept students who can 
do their work and who want to do it, without so much reference 
to how or what they have studied somewhere else. The western 



THE AMERICAN TYPE OF UNIVERSITY 7 1 

boys and girls say that under the accrediting system, by which 
institutions are examined more than students, it is easier to get 
into western than into eastern universities, but that, once in, it 
is hard to stay in a western university, while one who gets into 
an eastern university can hardly fail to be graduated if he will 
be polite to the professors and pay the term bills. And the west- 
ern people say that their way is best; that every one must have 
his chance; that at least his chance is not to be taken away upon 
a false premise ; that if he " flunks out " after having had his 
chance it is his fault and no one is going to worry about it; and 
that it is better to regard the graduation standards and apply them 
to four years' work that the faculty must know all about than 
to make a fetish of entrance requirements and have so much ado 
about prior work — about which they can know very little at the 
best. It is all worth thinking about. I am not a westerner : I am 
thoroughly a New Yorker. But I am for the open, the continuous 
and the smooth road from the primary school to the university, 
and for every one having his chance without any likelihood of 
his losing it upon a misunderstanding or a hazard. 

The large and strong universities will not only wax larger and 
stronger, but they will multiply in number. Because there will 
be so many of them, no one of them will serve so widely scattered 
a constituency as heretofore. Women are going to have the same 
rights as men to the higher learning. Boys will not always go 
to a university because their grandfathers went there. The time 
will come, while members of this graduating class are yet in middle 
life, when every large and vigorous city and the territory naturally 
tributary thereto will have a great university, able not only to 
satisfy its needs of the culturing studies but also its demands for 
professional and business upbuilding. 

What is to become of the literary colleges ? They are to flourish 
so long as, and wherever they can provide the best instruction in 
the humanities, and do not assume names which they have no 
right to wear, and do not attempt to do work which they can do 
only indifferently. They will train for culture and they will prepare 
for the professional work as of yore. And wherever one does this 
well and is content to do so, it is to have every sympathy and sup- 
port which an appreciative public can give. But no institutions, 
of whatever name or grade, are going to fool all the people for 
a great while, and the young men and women of America are 
going to have the best training that the world can give, and have 
it not a thousand miles from home. It is no longer necessary to 



72 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

cross the sea in order to get it, and even our own older univer- 
sities are close upon the time when their work must be reinforced 
from the newer ones, more than the newer ones from the older 
ones. 

Obviously, the American university, as no other university in 
the world, must regard the life, and especially the employments, 
of the people. It must exhibit catholicity of spirit ; it must tolerate 
all creeds ; it must inspire all schools ; it must guard all the pro- 
fessions, and it must strive to aid all the industries. It must 
quicken civic feeling in a system where all depends upon the rule 
of the people. It must stand for work, for work of hand as well 
as of head, where all toil is alike honorable and all worth is cor- 
nered upon respect for it. 

In a word, our immigration is making a nation of a wholly new 
order ; our democracy is developing a new kind of civilization ; 
our system of common schools, primary and secondary, has 
brought forth a type of advanced schools peculiar to the country. 
Institutions that would prosper may better recognize the fact. 
The universities that would thrive must put away all exclusiveness 
and dedicate themselves to universal public service. They must 
not try to keep people out : they must help all who are worthy to 
get in. It is not necessary that all of these institutions shall stand 
upon exactly the same level ; it is necessary that each shall have 
a large constituency ; it is necessary that all shall connect with some 
schools that are below them. It is imperative that all shall value 
the man at his true worth and not reject him because his prepara- 
tion has lacked an ingredient which a professor has been brought 
up to worship. Essentially so when, in case the boy has studied 
the subject in the high school, the professor is as likely as other- 
wise to tell him that he has been wrongly taught and that he must 
get what he has learned out of his head before he can start right 
and hope to know the thing as he ought. It is necessary that all 
shall be keen enough to see what is of human interest, and broad 
enough to promote every activity in which any number of people 
may engage. 

The American university will carry the benefits of scientific re- 
search to the doors of the multitude. It will make healthier houses 
and handsomer streets, richer farms and safer railways, happier 
towns and thriftier cities, through the application of fundamental 
principles to all the activities of all the people. It will train 
balanced men and women and therefore it will promote sport as 
well as work and control the conduct of students as well as open 
their minds. It will not absolve itself from any legitimate respon- 



THE AMERICAN TYPE OF UNIVERSITY 73 

sibilities which instructors are bound to bear towards youth. It 
will preserve the freedom of teaching, but it will not tolerate 
freakishness or license in the name of freedom of teaching. It 
will engage in research as well as instruction, but when men ab- 
solve themselves from teaching for the sake of research it will 
insist upon a grain of discovery in the course of a human life. 
We have a distinct national spirit in America. An American uni- 
versity will understand how that has come to be and what it is 
aiming at, will fall in with it, will be optimistic about it, and will 
help it on to its fullest consummation. 

I have discussed this theme here because it ought to be realized 
by the people and particularly by the universities of New York ; 
because I think the university which I have the honor to address 
is — quite as completely as any institution in the State — actuated 
by the spirit and outlook which an American university must have, 
and therefore because I had reason to believe my discussion v/ould 
have hospitality under this roof. I would be false to my sense of 
justice and my standard of public usefulness if I did not say that 
since my return to the State it has appeared more and more clearly 
to me that the marvelous growth of Syracuse University has re- 
sulted from the fact that it has been moved by the true spirit of 
modern American university progress. 

I know something of the details of university evolution. I know 
that many people have combined to produce this splendid evolu- 
tion. It has all come from individual giving and cooperative 
effort. The people of this thrifty inland city have surely done 
much for it. The return upon the investment will be a great one — 
how great only a few can now foresee. The Methodist church 
has been true to its history, its character and its aggressive demo- 
cratic spirit, in the valiant support it has given to this university. 
The donors who have made its equipment possible, the trustees 
who have kept it in the middle of the road, the teachers who have 
given it tone and distinction, the students and the graduates who 
have given it reputation for energy and valor, are all entitled to 
a warm word of commendation and congratulation from an educa- 
tional representative of the State. And to you, Mr Chancellor, 
for the masterful management which has bound all of these factors 
together and wrought out this magnificent creation, I shall always, 
respectfully and heartfully, remove my hat. 

I can not close without a direct word to this graduating class. 
It is essentially their day and my direct word to them has already 
been too long delayed. They would hardly realize that they had 



74 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

been graduated, without a little preachment. Young men and 
women, you. have now learned enough to cause you to fear a little. 
But fear not overmuch. You are reasonably prepared for work; 
hesitate not to go about it. There is a place for you, but you will 
have to go and win it. The rivalries will be sharp; but you have 
as much chance as any. Your salvation is to come through work. 
The world honors the man or woman who loves and honors work. 
It matters little what the work may be; take a step at a 
time and keep doing it all the time. You will always have knowl- 
edge and strength for the next step. Think not so much about 
the wages as about health and responsibility and the knowledge 
and skill for more and better work. You are not entitled to exact 
much yet. Make the best of whatever opens to you. Be prudent, 
but not overprudent. "A penny saved is a penny earned " is a 
maxim which is not true. In many a case the penny saved is a 
dollar lost, and it sometimes happens that it is public respect and 
fraternal regard lost. Do not stand aloof; certainly do not be a 
cynic; above all, do not get to be a freak. Keep step with the 
procession. It is a pretty good crowd and it is generally moving 
in the right direction. Have standards and stand by them. You 
can live by yourself and maintain your standards with little trouble, 
but then the standards will be of small account and you will make 
no more impression upon life than as though you had never lived. 
Reinforce yourself all the time. Accumulate a library. While you 
follow a business with devotion, seek recreation in literature, par- 
ticularly in the literature of biography and history, that your lives 
may have more joy in them, that you may gain the inspiration 
that quickens action, that you may follow your business to the 
fullest measure of success and round out your years with the fullest 
regard of the people among whom you live. Be patient. Keep 
steady. Bide your time. Success in the game will not come by 
a chance play, no matter how brilliant, so much as; by uniform 
efficiency and unceasing persistence. It is remarkable how men 
and women go up or down according to the direction they take 
and the regularity with which they keep at it. If you have a fair 
foothold at forty, you will be a round success at sixty. Be tolerant, 
but have faith in things. Do not let your student habit of inquiry 
and investigation unsettle all the faith that you learned at your 
mother's knee. Believe in your village, your ward, your city, 
your state. Sustain a church and at least some of the philanthropic 
effort that sets rather heavily on one half of the world but amelio- 
rates the hard situations of the other half. Act with a party; yell 
for a ticket; whoop it up for the flag. Withal, don't take your- 



THE AMERICAN TYPE OF UNIVERSITY 75 

selves too seriously. You will count for more if you do not. See 
things in sane perspective. Have a sense of humor in your outfit. 
Cultivate cheerfulness. Love sport, and play for all you are worth. 
Don't get to be one of the lunatics who work eighteen hours a day, 
recognize no Sundays, and never take a vacation. Submit to no 
coercion. Think out what is about right and stand by it. The 
others will eventually have to come to it. If you find you are in 
error, back out without attempting to disguise it; the farther 
on you go the more humiliation you will have. Be a good mixer. 
Give and take. Meet every obligation. On the basis of common 
decency make all the friends you can. Then you will carry the 
spirit of your university with you and do much to pay the debt 
which you will always owe her. 

But be on the alert for special opportunities to help her. As- 
sume not too conclusively that it must be in the conventional way. 
The unexpected will happen. Half a dozen years ago the richest 
man in the country became suddenly ill. In the absence of his 
regular physician he called in a young graduate of the Harvard 
School of Medicine and impulsively assured him that if he would 
get him out of that scrape he would pay any charge that he might 
make. The case was not serious to an educated man. The young 
man understood the difficulty and soon he wrought the needed 
cure. No bill was sent and in time it was asked for. The young 
physician reminded the multimillionaire of the promise. " Oh, 
yes," he said, " but I assumed, of course, that your charge would 
be within reason." The doctor's time had come. He said : " I 
shall make no charge, but I shall ask you to do something for me. 
The Harvard School of Medicine needs help. I would help her 
if I could. Under all the circumstances I feel warranted in asking 
you to look into the matter with a disposition to aid her justly, 
as you easily may." The old man said, " Would you like to bear 
a message to President Eliot?" "Yes." "Ask him to come and 
tell me all about it." In a week the man of wealth had given his 
pledge to the president of Harvard for a million when the balance 
should be raised, and in a month the five millons had been assured 
which have erected and equipped the finest plant for a medical 
college that is to be found in the wide, wide world. 

You may not accomplish all these things, but if you will aim at 
them, if you will put the training of this university to its logical 
use, I am sure that when the long shadows come they will bring 
ease and comfort and honor and that when it is all over there wHll 
be peace with the hereafter. 



NEW YORK'S OBLIGATIONS TO HER HISTORY 

AN ADDRESS BEFORE THE NEW YORK STATE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, 
AT BUFFALO, SEPTEMBER 1 7, I907 

We are all geniuses, or copyists. If we were not we would be 
mere nothings and that would be simply unthinkable. Genius 
does great things, but it is rare. Very few of us have even a 
spark of it. If the fact pains us, the bruise is not without its balm. 
The responsibility of greatness is heavy and the appointments and 
accompaniments of it are often trying. Geniuses are not always 
comfortable persons to live with, and if we may judge by appear- 
ances they do not uniformly have any too good a time of it them- 
selves. Nor is it possible to be entirely confident that one is a 
genius until after he is dead. Indeed he may be misled himself. 
An architect may be so deceived that the new buildings within the 
zone of his influence will be much more original than artistic. An 
instructor in music in the schools may be so fascinated with his 
own verse and his own airs that the poor children have to go away 
from the schools to hear good music at all. There are museums 
of art which would be more impressive if they would substitute 
inexpensive copies of masterpieces- for their more costly and com- 
monplace originals. There need be no fear of discouraging true 
genius. It can not be helped by the commonplace. Only through 
exacting criticisms, indeed only through adversity and struggling, 
can it come into the possession of its own. 

Essentially we are copyists. We do as other people do. In our 
dress, in our structures, in our food, in our reading and our think- 
ing, even in our ambitions and undertakings we imitate other 
people. We are very dependent upon our contacts and associa- 
tions. Character is hammered out upon the anvil of experience. 
Iron has one price in the ore, another in the pig, another in steel 
rails, another in razor blades, and yet another in cambric needles 
or watch springs. All depends upon the processes and the batter- 
ings it goes through. It is the same in the world's ratings of men 
and women. We absorb more than we initiate and doubtless the 
influences of which we are unthoughtful are deeper than those of 
which we are particularly reminded. 

Association and imitation are natural, agreeable, logical, suc- 
cessful. Separateness is difficult, practically impossible, simulated 

76 



NEW YORK S OBLIGATIONS TO HER HISTORY yj 

rather than real, unprofitable rather than productive. It is well to 
go into the crowd. No one need be ashamed of copying-. It is 
better to stand for decency in the crowd, and generally we do; 
to be discriminating in the copying, and ordinarily we are. The 
common advance which we are bound to recognize proves that, at 
least since the flood, the majority has kept company with decency 
and progress. We show the best we have at the fairs and the 
expositions; we do the best we can when others are looking on; 
and we copy the attractive, the enduring, the ennobling. We ac- 
cept those things which stir the self-consciousness which the Al- 
mighty has implanted in us. Genius is the instrument of God in 
the development of mankind, and conventionality is only the re- 
spect which intelligence has to pay to the thinking and the usage 
of the multitude. Our intuitions rest upon good footings ; the 
sentiment of the crowd is almost unerring. It is certainly so 
where discussion is unrestrained, where there is responsibility for 
action, and where there is the possibility of free public opinion. 
There the worthless things are transitory and the best become the 
constants. There opportunity stands upon the shoulders of ac- 
complishment and ambition mounts to the very peaks of possibility. 

With peoples it is the same as with individuals. Where the 
conscience of mankind has opportunity and expression, the gen- 
erations are progressive. There may be progress where there is a 
cleavage in society; where a monarch or an aristocracy determine 
the policies of the mass and do it with reasonably sound purposes 
and ordinarily sane thinking; where the inevitable greed of per- 
sonal advantage and special privilege is held in check by the pos- 
sibility of a revolution; but there is a nobler, truer, stronger and 
more rapid progress where all the people have the advantage of 
free discussion and steadying influences of responsibility, where 
there is interdependence between men and women of all conditions, 
and where all the thinking and all the ambitions and all the con- 
ditions of all the people are factors in determining the law and 
the policies, the opportunities and the ambitions, of the mass. 

Where there is progress there is obligation to what has gone 
before. Things worth having seldom spring full-fledged and un- 
expectedly into being. The world's progress is predicated upon 
conscience and discussion and cooperation and ambition and self- 
denial and sorrow. Every traveler who has added to our informa- 
tion, every scientist who has unlocked a new truth, every artist 
who has given us a more beautiful expression of form, every 
ministering angel who has quickened our sense of brotherhood by 



78 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

extending succor to a suffering one, every missionary who has 
carried the cross into the wilderness, every author who has aroused 
rational imagination or stirred harmless humor or enlarged logical 
reasoning, every orator who has quickened ambition, every states- 
man who has stood for the equality of right and the freedom of 
opportunity, every soldier who has laid down his life for liberty 
controlled by law, has placed every one of us under obligations 
to him. 

It is so with each of us and equally so with our generation; it 
is so with our political society, with that closer union of mankind 
which is imperative to the moral well being of men and women who 
live together under free institutions. If each of us owes a debt to 
ennobling and inspiring example, then our generation rests under 
enduring obligations to other generations which have cleared the 
wilderness and subdued the soil ; which have in battle decided what 
manner of institutions the country should have; which have writ- 
ten and interpreted and successfully applied humane and just laws; 
which have accomplished physical undertakings unexcelled by any 
people; which have erected all of the instrumentalities of intel- 
lectual culture known in any land; and have in not a few particu- 
lars gone before any people in any land in reaching toward the 
great ideal ends for which governments are established among 
men. 

The society which I have the honor to address needs no reminder 
that the history of New York is one of surpassing interest. Even 
if we make allowance for the patriotic fervor which the native 
children of the State must have in its career and look at it with 
the unbiased eye of the philosopher or the historian, we must know 
that it is a fascinating story. We can not treat much of details 
tonight but I am sure you will bear with me while I present some 
phases of the subject which I ought to be able to make of interest 
to you and which ought to deepen our sense of gratitude to the 
men and women gone before. 

It was fortunate for many reasons that the territory of the State 
was first settled by Dutchmen. They came with the favor and 
the aid, and not with the opposition, of their government. They 
came from a people who were further advanced in the higher 
learning and in the diffusion of elemental knowledge, and in the 
arts and crafts and in maritime commerce, and in political freedom 
and in institutional development than any other nation in the 
world, not excepting Britain at that time. All this had not come 
at first hand from the forces which produced our modern civiliza- 



new York's obligations to her history 79 

tion, for those forces came into operation with the birth of Chris- 
tianity and seem to have required a thousand and a half of years 
for their outworking in the intellectual and political as well as the 
religious development of Europe, but it did come from the first 
great and successful religious reformation and it did come, as 
swiftly and directly as ever an arrow sped from a bow, from the 
first dreadful and decisive war for religious and political freedom 
that the world had ever seen. 

It is true that the Dutch came hither for trade and commerce; 
it is also true that the motive was a worthy one. It was the natu- 
ral expanding of a people with newly won freedom. It was the 
beginning of what we have seen in such abundant measure since. 
And, whatever the motive, they brought their home feelings and 
outlook and institutions with them. They made no attempt at a 
theocracy or an aristocracy. For fifty years, while their little 
town grew slowly at the mouth of the Hudson and small hamlets 
were planted upon either side of the river to the north, they quietly 
and modestly, but firmly and decisively, set up schools and churches 
and courts and all the institutions of our modern society. They 
exercised freedom while they observed its limitations and obliga- 
tions. Of course they introduced the forms and usages of the 
Netherlands, as they gathered the fruits of their frugality and the 
energy of their trade. 

Even for a hundred years after they were unjustly overthrown 
by the accumulating power and ambitious designs of the English 
arms they struggled with their adversaries for the free schools and 
the free worship which their fathers had established by their valor 
in the Low Countries. Nor did they struggle in vain. Dutch 
and English were merged in the fires of the Revolution but in 
the process of assimilation quite as much of the Dutch as of the 
English survived. Much in the way of craftsmanship, and diver- 
sified agriculture, and domestic thrift, and land tenures, and scientific 
investigation, and even of the fine arts, and religious toleration, 
and of political equality, and of cooperative effectiveness endures 
to this day. 

The outcome of the Revolution put a new face upon the affairs 
of New York more decisively and quickly than upon those of any 
other state. The men and women of New England then, and not 
till then, began the unending migration to the westward. The 
Englishmen who came over the Berkshires had developed for 
obvious reasons into a different sort of Englishmen from those 
who had been coming through the Narrows. And it might be ob- 



80 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

served that those who came through the Narrows after the Revolu- 
tion must have come with a different outlook and may have spoken 
in a milder tone than those who came before. Be that as it may, 
there was not much in common between New York and New Eng- 
land before the Revolution. New England at the close of the 
eighteenth century was not so very different from old England 
at the opening of the seventeenth. It was in a state of quiescent 
and serene religious intolerance which New York had never known. 
It was a condition which continued there to a later time than any- 
where else in the country. New England Puritanism was a noble 
cult, certainly it was the embodiment of sincerity, of principle, 
and of character. Quite as certainly it was the embodiment of 
self-content and of tenacity. But when it came to close quarters 
with another people of quite as much character, quite as much 
poise, and quite as much tenacity, the hour had come when a new 
measure of mutual respect and a new measure of toleration could 
be the only issue of the contact. And this it was which caused the 
pledge of absolute religious freedom, of the complete dissociation 
of worship and of political administration, to be enshrined in the 
written constitution of New York before it found a place in that 
of any other state of the Union. It must have been the want of 
it which caused Massachusetts to be the very last of the original 
states to put that pledge in her constitution. 

When the foundations had been laid the greatness of the Empire 
State became possible. It had already commenced. But what a 
labor in the beginning! Those were the days of farms, not of 
towns and cities. Think of the task of the pioneer farmers among 
the hills and rocks and unbroken forests between the Hudson 
and the Montezuma marshes. The western men are accustomed 
to say that if the early settlers had known of the black, rich land 
upon the prairies, New England and New York would never have 
been settled at all. Be that as it may, they were settled and well 
settled. Clearings were made, and houses were built, and pastures 
were made ample, and herds were grown. Meadows appeared and 
great highways were opened. Churches were established in every 
town ; often where there was no town. A school was set up at 
every crossing of the roads. Sons and daughters in liberal num- 
bers were grown also. All worked with their hands in the house 
or upon the land. The overwhelming number worked with their 
heads also. There was no rich or idle class. There was no tenant 
farming. There was a distinctly new order of rural society, and 
there was abundant result. All that was needed was produced 



new York's obligations to her history 8i 

on the place. Fresh beef was a little scarce, but lambs and chickens 
were always at hand. The smokehouse was never empty and the 
cellar always full. The cooking would honor a palace. Hos- 
pitality was as warm as the sunshine and as free as the air. There 
was much going to and fro, between the busy seasons, and good 
fellowship and much public enterprise prevailed. There was no 
meanness under the guise of politeness and no subtle maneuver- 
ing to satisfy greed at the cost of another, or if there was it was 
punished harshly. There was much blunt and sincere and earnest 
and productive living. The result was a noble state, the first agri- 
cultural state in the Union. We lift our hats to the men and 
women who made it so and we would to God that some turn in the 
wheel of economics, without taking away what has followed, might 
bring it all back again. 

Of the foundations and the growth, of our material prosperity 
it is necessary to say but little. We have doubtless had some 
advantage from situation but it has not been an exclusive advan- 
tage. There are other great harbors than ours upon the Atlantic 
coast and other peoples might have built great waterways to the 
westward. The foresight and courage which put $9,000,000 into 
the original building and $25,000,000 into the enlargement of the 
canal from Lake Erie to the Hudson long years ago were possible 
because of the leadership which the State had already gained in 
trade and commerce. That leadership related back to the energy 
and the honor of New York merchants in the colonial days. For 
full forty years the Erie canal was building before a shovelful of 
earth was turned. It was discussed by statesmen and planned by 
engineers for all that time. More than once the other states had 
the opportunity to share in the expense, in the advantage and in 
the glory and, happily for us, refused. It took a stouter courage 
to do it than it requires to spend a hundred millions in constructing 
a ship or barge canal and a hundred and fifty millions in improv- 
ing the highways now. It made easily possible our great cities 
and great railways, great buildings and great bridges and mar- 
velous tunnels, and all the other evidences of good government, of 
material prosperity, and of engineering skill. When we are prone 
to boast that our leadership in banking and manufactures and com- 
merce has never been in hazard and seems more secure now than 
ever, it is well to remember that it did not come in a day or a 
generation and that it might not have come at all but for the 
foundations which were laid by heroic generations of New York 
men and women who are gone. 



82 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

Our educational system is unique, not so much because of what 
we have done as of what our fathers did. The American educa- 
tional plan is unique; but the New York educational scheme is 
unique in the American plan. The Dutch influences have been 
very considerable and they persist to this day. Our State gives 
more support to and exercises, when necessary, more control over 
schools than any other state. The schools are more closely bound 
together in a state system. There is more done to assure a fair 
schoolhouse and a suitable school in places where the people are 
poor or indifferent. Special aid is given to the advanced schools, 
as nowhere else. All kinds and grades of schools are encouraged 
and very considerable progress has been made in binding them 
together in oneness of system. All manner of instructional in- 
strumentalities outside of the schools are looked after and, so far 
as practicable, made parts of the State educational system. The 
State has established the standards for admission to the profes- 
sions upon a plane which is almost prohibitive of professional 
reciprocity with other states. Our laws and our practices prevent 
fakes and punish frauds much more drastically than those of our 
neighbors do. Now and then someone protests against centralized 
authority. Protests may be healthy in administration. They often 
serve to keep us in the middle of the road. Surely our policy 
should not go to the length of supporting schools where they need 
no aid, nor of using the schools to promote special interests, nor 
of limiting freedom of teaching, nor of hampering any community 
in freely managing the business interests of the schools where 
the management is not a travesty upon sense and a fraud upon 
rights which are inviolable, nor of doing anything else which is 
not good for all of the people and all of the moral and intellectual 
interests of the commonwealth. The fundamental thought of the 
New York educational system is that the intellectual interests of 
every child of the State is the common interest of every citizen of 
the State and of every dollar of valuation in the enormous property 
of the State. The strong and the rich must help the weak and 
the poor. It is this that makes the cities raise millions every year 
beyond what they need for their own schools to aid the schools 
outside of the cities, as is done in few other states, and in no other 
state in anything like equal measure. It is this which goes as far 
as a state can go in equalizing educational opportunity to all. If 
it discourages novelties in psychology, and freakishness in peda- 
gogy, and graft in administration, it impedes neither the sane 
thinking nor the rational undertakings of any one. And in any 



new york's obligations to her history 83 

event, no one who is now living is responsible for it. If one will 
quarrel with it he must quarrel with men who are dead. It is the 
distinct and long-time policy of the State. It has developed out 
of our history. It has developed because of universal state pride 
and generosity and courage in all that concerns New York, because 
it was believed to be necessary and has been found to be good, 
and because the practically universal sentiment believes in it and 
supports it overwhelmingly. It was commenced as soon as the 
State could gather up its thoughts and bring together some scat- 
tered resources after the practical annihilation they had suffered 
through the central position which it had held in the War for In- 
dependence. It is because the statesmen of New York raised and 
distributed half a million to aid the schools in the closing years of 
the eighteenth century, upon a plan that was exclusively their own, 
that the state tax levy can carry six or seven millions for education 
in each of the opening years of the twentieth century and no one 
dissent in any quarter. It is because of the foundations which our 
fathers laid; because the principle that intellectual evolution is 
not a matter of local but is rather one of universal concern was 
made the corner stone of that foundation ; that the common senti- 
ment and the accumulating wealth of the people of New York 
leads them to put seventy millions of dollars each year to the uses 
of education and open wide the door of opportunity to all within 
our borders. 

The strong and steady unfolding of the professional life of New 
York is a story which, in any comprehensive or philosophical form, 
is yet to be written. The family doctor was not a quack ; the 
lawyer was not a pettifogger. Quacks and pettifoggers were even 
more quickly distinguished and bluntly described in the early days 
than now. And in the early days there were boys who were glad 
to wear clothes smutted with honest toil, and happy in working 
with their hands. Few of them aspired to the professions ; and 
the one fundamental principle that every one must have his equal 
chance had not been worked out in our system of education then 
as now. We are at the very front in requiring that the candidate 
must have at least four years of work of academic grade, four 
years of work in an approved professional school, the bachelor's 
degree from an approved institution authorized to confer it, and 
a certificate earned in the State examinations, before he can prac- 
tise his profession; but it may well be doubted whether profes- 
sional capacity is as much regarded by the people of the State 
as it was a half century ago. Be that as it may, certain it is that 



84 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

the strong men in the professions were relatively more influential 
in primitive conditions than now. Medical integrity and experi- 
ence counted for more when medical knowledge was in its in- 
fancy; legal learning was more potent when our unique and 
independent judicial system was in its experimental stages and 
principles rather than precedents were necessarily the guides ; and 
the minister, with his hard and fast theology, impressed minds 
more deeply when he was pretty nearly the exclusive intellectual 
force in the everyday life of people whose labor was mainly with 
their hands. And the legal, medical and clerical professions have 
from the beginning laid New York under heavy obligations to 
them. Indeed those professions have been so distinguished and 
the obligations to them are so great that a mere passing reference 
to them seems altogether lacking in the bare justice which is 
their due. 

Something more than the merest incidental reference to the 
bearing of the clergy upon the intellectual life of our fathers 
should be said concerning the religious history of the State. It 
has already been pointed out that toleration made exceptionally 
early progress here because of the mixing of two very different 
and very forceful civilizations. Toleration of religious differences 
nourishes and propagates pure religion quite as much as it makes 
for intellectual progress. It brings more respect for reason than 
for authority, and any religion that is potential must spring from 
feeling, guided by reason rather than directed by power. Men 
and women are naturally religious; they respond to control and 
direction only from the necessities of the situation, and religion 
is satisfying and potential only where the external expression of 
it is free and respected. This grows as intelligence advances. Re- 
ligious freedom and intellectual freedom have aided each other in 
all ages, the world over. A religious machine with political and 
military power behind it hinders both moral and mental progress. 
It looks as though all the world is about to realize this. New York 
realized it very early and very clearly. Resenting the power of a 
church in the affairs of the State, assuming universal education 
as a public charge, and assuring it through the definite support 
and control of the State, New York, almost from the beginning, 
was conspicuously helpful to the freedom and the rationality of 
religious life. It very early forced decisive changes in mere 
theology and a material decline in mere ecclesiasticism. It did 
not lessen the spirituality of it. Indeed it widened the applica- 
tion of it. It began to take out of it the absurdities which the 



new york's obligations to her history 85 

most devout found it very difficult to explain or overlook. It 
took the pugnacities as well as the absurdities out of it. It at- 
tracted human nature, no matter what language it spoke or whether 
it prayed standing, sitting, kneeling, or with no required posturing ; 
or indeed though it had no form of prayer beyond the breathing 
of one's feelings to himself. It made for universal brotherhood, 
for mutual respect, for the common policies by which all could 
live, for freedom within the State, but for a stronger state to sup- 
press lL<:nse and excess, and therefore for neighborliness, for co- 
operation in the industries and in education and in all the things 
which make the commonwealth great. It would of course be too 
much to say that this was exclusive with New York, but it is 
none too much to say that it was unprecedented in New York, that 
it was the potential cause of the State's earlj and strong develop- 
ment in people, and in property, and in usefulness, and that we- 
would be thoroughly unjust to the men and women gone before 
us, and who made it, if we failed to recognize the fact. 

Even in such a cursory exploitation of my theme, mention must. 
be made of the scientific work which our State has done, not 
through its colleges but by its own officials, for at least two fult 
generations. In all of the sciences related to economic interests 
we have carried research farther by our own agents than any other 
state has thought of. The indefatigable industry and belligerent 
disposition of James Hall, for almost sixty years State Geologist, 
caused the territory of the State to be more completely investi- 
gated and charted, geologically, than any other like extent of 
territory in the world. He loved his science with the enthusiasm 
of a girl and fought for it with the ferocity of a lion. More than 
twenty-five years ago I was a member of the ways and means 
committee of the Assembly when Dr Hall came to appeal for 
another appropriation to finish his paleontology. He had many 
times given assurances about completing it in order to smooth 
the road for appropriations, and the committee had become some- 
what enlightened and skeptical. They prodded him with the de- 
mand that he should fix the limits of time and money necessary to 
complete the work. " Do you expect science to be bound by laws 
and contracts ? " he demanded. " Yes, and this paleontology busi- 
ness must be settled in this bill or there will be no appropriation," 
they answered. The old man raised his eyes to Heaven, in disgust 
more than in prayer, and he brought his clinched fist down upon 
the table with a bang as he said " My God ! that science ever had 
to wait on the maneuvers of a legislative committee/' It is super- 



86 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

fluous to remark that he got his appropriation. He printed much 
and he had much trouble with unscientific printers. I once heard 
him say to the State Printer " Mr Van Benthuysen, you tear my 
theology all to pieces." "How's that?" asked the head of the 
great printing house. " I don't believe in a hell " he answered, 
" but there ought to be one to which printers could be sent." Be 
that as it may, I doubt not that if you would ask any scientific 
man in Europe who had not traveled in America what he thought 
about the states he would first express his appreciation of the 
geological and other scientific publications of the State of New 
York. 

And the aid which the State has given to natural science through 
publication it has also given to history. With a freedom bordering 
upon prodigality it has printed everything that could be expected 
from its commanding position or be informing to its people. Per- 
haps it has not always been discriminating. Very likely the profits 
of the printers have aided the wisdom of the Legislatures and lent 
energy to the revolutions of the press, but there is another side 
to it. They have stimulated scholarship and research and author- 
ship, and all together they have saved much from permanent loss, 
provided us with an inexhaustible mine of material, and encour- 
aged investigation and authorship for all time to come. More 
than once this State has sent its agents abroad to rescue scraps 
of its colonial history from utter loss ; many times it has initiated 
steps for reclaiming important happenings from obscurity or mis- 
interpretation, and always it has shown a quick interest in all that 
could aid the intellectual virility and balance of its people. And 
what the State has done the men and women of the State have done. 
What the State has done, its Board of Regents, its colleges, and 
academies, and professional schools, its editors and merchants and 
engineers and historians and governors and legislators, have done 
to break out its roads and follow them to surprising consum- 
mations. 

This brings us to a word about our political evolution, — not 
the story of party contests, but the steady unfolding of political 
institutions, assuring equality of great opportunity, and bringing 
forth surprising issues, through the making of laws and the exer- 
cise of the powers of government by many millions of widely 
different people. 

Since the first Constitution, made in 1777, we have radically 
reformed the fundamental instrument of the State government 
three times, namely, in 1821, 1846 and 1894. In 1867 a constitu- 



new york's obligations to her history 87 

tional convention prepared a new instrument which was, except 
as to the judiciary article, rejected by the people. We have adopted 
sixty-six amendments to the Constitution in twenty different 
years. It must be observed that we have exhibited confidence, as 
well as exercised freedom, concerning what is justly held to be 
a very sacred instrument in meeting new situations. The statutes 
enacted by the Legislature would, with pardonable exaggeration, 
make a pile as high as Mount Marcy. The judicial construction, 
interpretation, adjustment, and annulment of many of these writ- 
ten laws have occupied the industrious attention of a long and 
learned bench from the beginning. 

There are those who are prone to criticize the freedom and the 
volume of our lawmaking. I have but little sympathy with them. 
Of course, many things are done inconsiderately and inconsistently. 
There is little harm except to create the greater need for multiply- 
ing judges, and the judges at least will admit that that is not 
without its compensations. 

Under our free and unique system for annulling laws which are 
in conflict with the Constitution, there is no danger. The over- 
whelming advantage is in the open channels it makes for the free 
flow of our democracy and the quick opportunity which it provides 
for meeting new situations in authoritative ways. Our much legis- 
lation has often helped us at what seemed the breaking point. It 
has been the vehicle of our rapid progress. One state has copied 
from another and thus it often happens that many states have 
had the natural advance of twenty years in one. The judiciary of 
New York, with exceptions so rare as not to be in the reckoning, 
has always been independent, patriotic, and learned. The law re- 
ports of New York are held in unfeigned respect in all parts of 
the world. The system is unique in nation building; but it is 
balanced, logical, safe. It was vital to a rapidly growing nation of 
free and widely different people like ours. It adjusts itself to the 
multiplying millions, it stops a runaway before the brink is reached, 
and it gives opportunity to the material, intellectual, and moral 
progress which all good Americans want. And how the forming 
of it, and the administration of it trains the ambition, and the 
freedom, and the knowledge, and the self-restraint, and the sense 
of responsibility of honest people ! How it develops very ordinary 
men into very efficient leaders! How it opens the possibilities to 
each and keeps the whole mass moving on ! 

And the product has been as satisfactory as the method has 
been logical and free. Here we are, eight millions of people in a 



88 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

highly organized political society. Since the days when the Dutch 
and the English liberalized the thinking and added to the strength, 
the security and the opportunity of each by assimilation, we have 
received a copious stream of immigration from nearly every people 
under the sun. History has again and again repeated itself. Ap- 
prehension has uniformly given place to new confidence, greater 
strength, and larger undertakings. Security and opportunity have 
not grown less, but greater. The new factors have made the 
fundamental principles of our democratic philosophy more impera- 
tive. The statutes and the decisions have more and more reflected 
the new situations. The making of the law has had to contend 
with problems that were so new and so hard that it has been 
halted for the moment, and blundered now and then; but the 
clarity and the force and the balance which public opinion gains 
through its operation in the presence of danger have been uni- 
formly triumphant. In spite of the forebodings of the conser- 
vatives and the predictions of the pessimists, whom we have 
always had with us and who are doubtless very necessary wheels 
in our political machinery, we have come very near proving the 
practicability of pure democracy through the rational exercise of 
our political powers. 

I shall use but one further illustration to enforce the lesson of 
my theme. It is an important one, — the story of military accom- 
plishment in the Empire State. I can only allude to it. All the 
leading nations are now in conference at the Hague for the pur- 
pose of promoting international comity by agreement, by arbitra- 
tion, and by establishing constitutionalism between, as well as 
within, the political organizations of the peoples of the world. 
The outworking of Christianity, which has not only enlarged but 
has diffused learning, and the obvious advantage of common 
obedience to just law over the mere submission to physical force, 
are overcoming the brutal disposition to engage in war. But wars 
have been imperative, if freedom was to triumph over power and 
right was to compel ignorance and greed to open the door to 
opportunity. And happy indeed may that people be who have 
reason enough to know that their religious and educational and 
institutional heritage did not come through aggressive warfare for 
the sake of empire or unlawful gain, but did come through the fact 
that their fathers knew what their natural rights were and had 
the valor with which to gain them. 

There is hardly a county in New York which has not been the 
scene of heroic struggles. There is scarcely a town without heroic 



new York's obligations to her history 89 

incident and tradition. Everywhere there are houses bearing the 
marks of conflict, and here and there are the earthworks and 
other remains of heavy battles which decided much in the history 
of America. Once in a while a monument or a tablet proves that 
a few people have memory and appreciation, but the greater num- 
ber are too often ignorant or indifferent about the events which 
make grounds sacred. 

When civilization took up its march across this country from 
east to west, it everywhere found in the Indians subtle and dan- 
gerous foes. The struggle, which in its deadly form began with 
King Philip in New England, in the seventeenth century, has led 
trails of blood all the way to the Golden Gate and continued quite 
to our day. Nowhere was it so bitter as in New York, for the 
Iroquois were the royalists of Indian life. It is idle to doubt or 
debate the moral rights of the matter now. A great land must 
inevitably go to the people who will put it to its best uses. Legal 
or moral title to the earth's surface must rest upon something 
more than savage uses. White civilization might well have paid 
some other price than the one it did to extinguish any rights in the 
soil which roving wild men had in it. It was certainly so where 
the foe to its progress was so subtle in diplomacy and so savage 
in war as the Five Nations. The tribute they exacted was the 
blood of the settlers without discrimination. They terrorized every 
cabin and filled the land with horror ; but they made warriors and 
strategists and statesmen of pioneer farmers. 

Until close to the hour of the Revolution the northern border 
of New York was the mainly inhabited frontier of English civiliza- 
tion in America. Our territory was the base of military opera- 
tions and, so far as we had men to serve, they were in the fore- 
front of the battalions which determined by their valor that the 
predominant power and the enduring civilization in America, with 
all that that fact implies, was to be English rather than French. 
Indeed the most of the hardest fighting was upon our soil. The 
names of Niagara and Frontenac should signify something very 
different from what they do ; there should be something very un- 
like a summer hotel where Fort William Henry stood; and the 
neglected and crumbling ruins at Ticonderoga, — the key to the 
strategic situation and scene of historic events in two wars for 
English freedom in America, might well be cherished and pro- 
tected by the State, for they are the noblest expression we have 
or can have of the times which both tried men's souls and made 
men great. 



90 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

The conditions which made New York fighting ground in the 
French and Indian wars made it even more so after Canada had 
passed over to the English crown and the war for American in- 
dependence was on. In the beginning Britain was organized and 
in possession and if she could hold this territory she would cut 
the embryonic republic in twain and triumph in the end. By in- 
trigue, gifts and abhorrent promises the Indians had been brought 
into sympathy and service with the crown. The white settlements 
were far apart. The skulking foes that infested the woods on 
every side were quite as dangerous as the British regulars who 
lived in camps and moved in brigades. While our only seaport 
was held by the invading army from the beginning to the end 
of the struggle, the yeoman of the interior cleared their territory 
of both regulars and savages before, in point of time, the bitter 
conflict was halfway over. Of course, they did not do it alone 
but they certainly held the right of the line that did do it. The 
grades and the waterways from the mouth to the headwaters of the 
Hudson and then from the head of Lake George to the outlet of 
Champlain may be said in all truth to have been the veritable 
warpath of the Revolution. Nature made it so. The highest point 
in the whole distance is less than a hundred and fifty feet above the 
level of the sea. Considerably more than half of the three hundred 
and fifty miles was navigable by the largest vessels and all but 
twenty miles of it could be traversed by smaller craft. It was well 
known for it had been the trail of the savages, "the dark and 
bloody ground," for centuries. Practically the same was true of 
the beautiful valley from the mouth to the source of the Mohawk. 
The only place where the Atlantic watershed breaks through the 
Appalachian mountains is at Little Falls. The route is practically 
level and has almost as short a carry between the headwaters of 
the Mohawk and those of Oneida lake as that upon the other trail. 
Small craft may be floated all the way from Ontario to the 
Atlantic. 

When it was evident that neither New England nor the mouth 
of the Hudson could be held by the Americans, the eyes of both 
combatants turned to these natural thoroughfares between our 
great harbor which was the comfortable rendezvous of the British 
navy, and Canada the hospitable base and stronghold of the British 
army. Something more than eyes were turned. The first sub- 
stantial feat of American arms was in the capture of Crown Point 
and Ticonderoga. The first American navy was upon Lake Cham- 
plain. The most comprehensive and strategic campaign of the 



new York's obligations to her history 91 

British forces in the entire war embraced the advance of one army 
up the Hudson, of another from Canada up Lake Champlain and 
Lake George, and of a third across Lake Ontario and down the 
Mohawk. With bombast and bluster and tripping step they were 
to occupy these thoroughfares, make a junction at Albany and 
grasp the key to the situation. The western army was annihilated 
at Oriskany by the sturdy yeomen in the valley, after they had lost 
a larger percentage of dead and wounded than was suffered by 
American troops in any other engagement in the war. The north- 
ern army under the proudest general of the crown, haughtily boast- 
ing that " Britains never retreat " marched directly to decisive 
defeat and humiliating surrender at Saratoga. When the news of 
Oriskany and Saratoga reached the southern army it turned about 
and imitated the lower Hudson in its hurried and limpid course to 
the sea. And when all this was followed by Sullivan's conclusive 
punishment of the Iroquois and their allies in the Wyoming valley, 
the rest was largely a matter of endurance until the King should 
tire of the waiting and the expense, or the cabinet should give 
way to another which would stand again for the fundamentals of 
English liberty. 

We must lay no claim to what is not justly ours. But we owe 
it to our fathers and to our children to prevent literary fiction and 
much repetition from perverting a true understanding of historic 
facts. The first blood of the Revolution was spilled in New York 
and not in Boston. 1 Every home in our sparsely settled State was 
in deadly danger from the capture of Ticonderoga till the anni- 
hilation of the Indians from the Hudson river to the Genesee 
country. What memories the names of Cobleskill, Schoharie, 



1 As this statement has been questioned since the address was delivered, 
it seems well to say that reference was made to the conflict at Golden hill 
(now John street) between Cliff street and Burling slip, on January 18, 1770. 
The Patriots having erected a " Liberty Pole," the King's troops quartered 
in the city destroyed it on the night of January 16. The next day a meeting 
of citizens resolved that any soldiers found in the night with arms, or out 
of barracks after roll call and behaving in an insulting manner, should 
be treated as enemies to the peace of the city. On January 18 scurrilous 
placards, impugning the motives and character of the Sons of Liberty, and 
signed " The Sixteenth Regiment of Foot " were posted about the city. 
Three soldiers caught posting one of these placards were seized by citizens 
and taken before the mayor. A company of soldiers came to release their 
companions. A conflict ensued and in the course of the day there was a 
second one, in which one citizen was killed, three wounded, and a large 
number more or less injured. It was much the same kind of an affair as 
the Boston Massacre, which occurred March 5, 1770, a month and a half 
later. The Golden hill affair, therefore, was undoubtedly the first armed 
conflict resulting in the shedding of blood in the Revolution. 



92 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

Cherry Valley, Springfield, Canajoharie, German Flats, Minisink 
and many others may well revive? Oriskany in severity and in 
results was a heavier battle than Bunker Hill. Saratoga was the 
decisive engagement of the war. Of course, all that was done in 
New York was not done by New York men but with main reliance 
upon volunteer soldiers the men of a state were necessarily at the 
forefront of any warfare within their borders. At Oriskany the 
New York Militia put British regulars, and Tories, and Indians to 
the sword. There the flag of the United States was first unfurled 
in battle. Forced by their situation to bear the leading part in the 
Revolution, the men of New York, as Wayne wrote Washington 
of the men who captured Stony Point, " behaved like men deter- 
mined to be free." 

There is no need to speak of the course of this State in the 
second war with Great Britain, in the unnecessary and unjust war 
with Mexico, in the awful struggle to save the Union from over- 
throw by the slave power, or in the expulsion of Spain and the 
protection of Cuba. We have never sought quarrels. We have 
had interests which quickened the wish of rational men and women 
to live at peace with our neighbors and all the world. But the 
State of New York never turned from a duty. Whenever she has 
deemed it necessary to exercise force she has done it with a spirit 
and a completeness which emphasize another phase of the debt 
which all of her children owe her. 

There is much more to be said, but little more can be said to- 
night. No one knows better than the members of the State His- 
torical Society, of whom I am happy in being one, how very frag- 
mentary has been my treatment of a great theme. Your knowl- 
edge of the breadth and depth of the subject and of the limitations 
which the need of brevity imposes upon a speaker will make you 
considerate of the inadequacy of the presentation. Possibly the 
brief form, which may easily be placed before many people, may 
signify to increased numbers something of our neglect of our 
history and somewhat of our duty to the men and women who 
have made it. 

Our fathers were not much given to leaving records for their 
children. Those children have been frequently unmindful, often 
indifferent, sometimes inaccurate. We have uniformly been en- 
grossed with innumerable activities and the very volume of our 
history makes it difficult to popularize it. Many have come among 
us in later years who are valiantly helping us to make more his- 



NEW YORK S OBLIGATIONS TO HER HISTORY 93 

tory, who can not easily appreciate our early history, for they are 
a part of the story of another people struggling for the democracy 
which has come to be more stable here than in any other land un- 
der the sun. The writers of American history have, for the most 
part, lived in other states and they have written under the spell 
which other associations impose upon them. We have not been 
much aided by song and story; at times we have been injured by 
literary humor which other peoples seemed unable to grasp. The 
children in the schools, often the students in the colleges and uni- 
versities, more often still the men and women of our busy cities 
and towns, know but little of the splendid story and appreciate all 
too lightly the obligations which it imposes. 

If we could mend this, if we could stir popular enthusiasm, if we 
could quicken investigation by scholars and present the results in 
more popular form, if we could effectuate a deeper and more gen- 
eral appreciation of the fundamental causes of the primacy and the 
power of the State, we would at one and the same time give justice 
to the past and invaluable service to the future. The government 
of the State will give any proper aid which the thoughtfulness 
of this society, the work of scholars, or the patriotism of the people, 
will seriously suggest. 

But, after all, the writing of history is not the only way of 
expressing our obligations to the makers of it. Here we are, eight 
millions of every kind of people that the sun ever shone upon, 
proving the stability and the potentiality of a pure democracy. We 
are not in peril ; we confide absolutely in our security. Discus- 
sion is freer, sentiment makes more rapidly, and conclusions are 
surer and sounder than ever before. We can do anything we think 
well to do. The commercial primacy of the State seems sure 
enough but endless measures are in progress to make it doubly 
sure. The national centers of the publishing business, of finance, 
and of manufactures are within our borders. The problem of 
absolute democracy in religion has worked out to a complete solu- 
tion. So the great problem of democracy in education is well 
advanced and the solution is inevitable. We are just now in the 
midst of the complete applications of the fundamental principles 
of our democracy to our industries. We are beginning to make 
and enforce laws which will promote all the just interests of both 
capital and labor and limit the improper exercise of the organized 
power of each. Our children will wonder that we had so much 
trouble making it clear that the common power can be used only in 



94 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

the common interest, and that in our business, as well as in our 
religion, our education, and our politics, every child of the nation 
is to have his free and equal chance. If we make it completely 
so, as seems likely enough, we shall show to all the world that 
democracy opens opportunity to moral and material progress, and 
we shall discharge a part of the obligation which our generation 
of freemen owes to the generations of freemen who have gone 
before. 



ILLITERACY IN THE UNITED STATES 

REPRINTED FROM THE YOUTH'S COMPANION, BY COURTESY OF THE 
PERRY MASON COMPANY 

We have very exact information about the number of people 
in the United States who are illiterates. By an " illiterate " we 
mean a person who is ten years old or more and can not write in 
any language. It is generally true that if one can not write he 
can not read. 

The proportion of illiterates is smaller than it used to be. In 
1870 there were 200 illiterates to each 1000 of population; in 1880 
there were 170; in 1890 there were 133; in 1900 there were 107. 

The accompanying table will show the number of illiterates to 
each 1000 people in the various states in 1900. 

These figures are from the census, but a table from election 
returns showing the number of illiterate voters per thousand people 
in each state is so nearly the same that it confirms the substantial 
accuracy of the census figures. 

We may be interested to see how the number of illiterates in 
our states compares with the number in the best educated countries 
of Europe. 

In every nine voters we have one full grown man who can not 
read or write. We have no basis of exact comparison, but there are 
related and authentic figures which are more convincing than 
comforting. 

TABLE SHOWING NUMBER OF ILLITERATES IN EACH THOUSAND OF 
POPULATION BY CENSUS OF I9OO 

Iowa 23 Colorado 42 

Nebraska 23 Indiana 46 

Kansas 29 Idaho 46 

Washington 31 Wisconsin 47 

Utah 31 California 48 

Oregon 33 South Dakota 50 

Ohio 40 Maine 51 

Wyoming 40 New York 55 

Minnesota 41 Oklahoma 55 

Illinois 42 North Dakota 56 

Michigan 42 Vermont 58 

95 



96 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

Massachusetts 59 Kentucky 165 

New Jersey 59 Arkansas . 204 

Connecticut .. 59 Tennessee 207 

Pennsylvania 61 Florida 219 

Montana 61 Virginia 229 

New Hampshire 62 North Carolina 287 

Missouri 64 Arizona 290 

Rhode Island 84 Georgia 305 

Maryland in Mississippi 320 

West Virginia 114 New Mexico 332 

Delaware 120 Alabama 340 

Nevada 133 South Carolina 359 

Texas 145 Louisiana 385 

The Imperial Bureau of Statistics at Berlin informs us that of 
all the recruits in the German army in 1903, but 1 in 2500 was 
illiterate. In Sweden and Norway it was but 1 in 1250; in Den- 
mark, 1 in 500; in Switzerland, 1 in 166; in Holland, 1 in 40; in 
France, 1 in 16. In 1902, in England and Scotland, 1 man in 40 
and 1 woman in 40 were unable to write their names when married. 
In other words, we appear to have more than four times as many 
illiterates as there are in England and Scotland, and infinitely 
more than there are in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, and the 
German Empire. 

About four fifths of our American illiterates were born, or their 
parents were born, among the most unfavored people of the Old 
World. But that fact must not lead us to suppose that we have 
but few illiterates born in this country. The fact is, that in many 
of our states we have more illiterates whose parents are natives 
than those whose parents are foreign born. In New York State 
in 1900 there were 29,188 of the former and 18,162 of the latter. 
And New York is not at all exceptional. 

If we expect to find a larger percentage of illiteracy in the cities 
than in the country, we must be disappointed. The percentage of 
illiteracy in New York City, and in our other large cities, is less 
than in many rural counties, and is not greater than in the average 
rural county. The percentage of illiterates who are American born 
is much larger in the country than in the cities. Indeed, there 
are few if any rural counties which show so small a percentage 
of native illiterates as the largest cities show. The city and county 
of New York has a smaller percentage of illiterates who are the 



ILLITERACY IN THE UNITED STATES 97 

children of foreign born parents than any other county in the State 
of New York. 

This may indicate how much more convenient the schools are 
in the city than in the country, and how much better the school 
attendance and child labor laws are enforced in the cities than in 
the country; but it also indicates that immigrant parents in the 
cities voluntarily send their children to school more regularly than 
do native born parents living in the country. 

The facts clearly show that illiteracy is less prevalent in cities 
of more than 25,000 inhabitants than in smaller cities. They show 
that illiteracy is more common above twenty-five years of age 
than between ten and twenty-five. Illiteracy among children is 
rapidly decreasing in all sections of the country. 

There is more illiteracy among women than men, but the 
difference is growing less, and it seems probable that before long 
there will be more among men than women. 

Our American states are spending much more money for 
popular education than is spent by the same number of people in 
any other country in the world. Why do we have so many un- 
lettered people above ten years of age, and particularly why do we 
have so many more than they have in England, Scotland, Holland, 
Switzerland, Norway or Germany? 

The answer to this question is not very difficult. There are at 
least three reasons for it : 

First. We are now receiving vast numbers of immigrants from 
countries where illiteracy is very prevalent. It has not always 
been so. We formerly got most of our immigrants from the more 
intelligent countries of the Old World. Now we are getting most 
from the less favored nations. Although there is no reason for 
fear that their children can not be educated and assimilated, both 
parents and children do add much to our percentage of illiteracy. 
But we get many immigrants from countries having less illiteracy 
than we have. One class somewhat offsets the other. It is hard 
to know what to do with illiterates who want to come to America 
from other lands. It is difficult, perhaps wrong, to deny them 
the privilege of coming, but clearly the matter requires much 
attention. 

Second. We undertake more in our schools than other nations 
do in theirs, but the leading nations of Europe do what they under- 
take much more generally and completely than we do. In other 
words, in Europe there are classes and much caste. The people 
who have made and who execute the laws have not reasoned that 



98 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

every child ought to have a chance to get a liberal education, but 
they have reasoned that for the good of the nation every child 
must be required to go to school regularly between about six 
and fourteen years of age, that he may be sure of an elementary 
education. 

Third. They enforce school attendance laws more systematically 
and completely in many other countries than we do. Unhappily, 
the common sentiment of America does not sustain the enforce- 
ment of laws requiring the attendance of children at school, as 
the common sentiment of many other countries does. We have 
much more freedom in this country than many other countries 
have, but we have more false ideas about freedom than many of 
them have. There is the pinch. 

Much depends upon the importance which in the popular mind 
attaches to the matter of sending children to school, and that in 
turn depends very largely upon what the government does. 

I once heard a prominent official in Berlin say that he was sure 
that there were not ten children in that city, of a million and a 
half people, out of school that day who ought to be there. The 
necessity of having children in school has been inbred in the life 
and thought of the German people. All their plans were made 
to conform to it. The enforcement of laws or royal decrees for 
a long time has trained the common sentiment, and resulted in 
a universal usage. It is thought as necessary to have children 
go to school regularly as to have them eat regularly. 

There is no doubt about the methods by which illiteracy may 
be reduced to a negligible quantity. It is to be done through 
complete statistics, through exact registration, through requiring 
that every child within fixed ages shall be in school — unless 
sick — whenever the schools are in session, through holding the 
parents more than the children responsible, and through seeing 
that every child is actually accounted for. 

In the table of states set forth at the beginning of this article all 
the states before Maryland have compulsory attendance laws, 
somewhat, although not very completely, enforced. West Virginia, 
Nevada and Kentucky have such laws, very much neglected. The 
other states have none. Look again at the figures opposite the 
names of the states, and see the difference in results. 

Experience is showing us very clearly what especial provisions 
must be placed in school attendance laws before they will accom- 
plish their ends. Very briefly these may be enumerated as 
follows : 



ILLITERACY IN THE UNITED STATES 99 

They must assert that every American child has the inherent 
right to an elementary education. It is a sacred right, which no 
one, not even a parent, may be allowed to defeat. They must 
require attendance of every child within fixed ages at school 
whenever the schools are in session unless excused for imperative 
cause by a responsible educational officer. They must punish 
parents with fine and imprisonment for not seeing that their 
children are in school. 

It makes no difference whether the school is public or private. 
The public and private schools must cooperate. An up to date 
and reliable registration of all children is imperative, and every 
one must be accounted for. Nothing but sickness or disability 
or a death in the family or 4 some overwhelming cause can be 
accepted as an excuse. Farmers have no more right to keep their 
children at home for farmwork or housework than people in the 
slums of the cities have to keep their children from school to sell 
papers or go begging. 

Ample school accommodations are to be provided and evening 
schools maintained. School attendance laws and child labor laws 
must conform to each other, and the officers of the school depart- 
ments and the labor departments must cooperate. Local authori- 
ties must have no option about enforcing the laws. And any 
officer of the school system or any public official who winks at 
violations of school attendance laws, or who refuses to enforce 
their penalties according to their intent, must be sharply punished 
for it. 

To this end the common sentiment must be quickened. Surely 
the people of the United States are not willing to admit that we 
are permanently to have more ignorant men and women in this 
country than they have in other civilized countries. 

Perhaps there is a factor in this problem that springs out of 
English and particularly of American history, and lies deep down 
in the nation's caution and self-consciousness. Americans are 
fundamentally opposed to any unnecessary meddling with their 
affairs by the government. They have always had great confidence 
in a resourcefulness which seems able to meet any actual peril 
when the time comes. They attach the greatest importance to the 
free chance for every one. 

It begins to look as if it is quite as important to look after the 
rights of those who can not look after their own rights to an 
elementary education as to hold out to the few the opportunities 
for an advanced education. 



IOO NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

If it is no more important, it is as important. And it will be a 
crowning glory to our republican system if the nation will put 
away its youthful vanity, submit with cheerfulness, to the regu- 
lations which really enlarge liberty, deepen the common respect 
for the law by enforcing it, meet difficulties in practical ways, and 
make certain that all of its children have the elements and instru- 
ments of knowledge as well as that the stronger ones have the 
chance to scale the mountain peaks of learning. 



A FEDERAL EDUCATIONAL PLAN NEEDED 

REPRINTED FROM THE OUTLOOK OF OCTOBER 5, I907, BY COURTESY OF 

THE EDITORS 

There is very little adaptation of instruments or of administra- 
tive methods to ends, very little that is expressive of professional 
experience and opinion, and practically nothing in the way of 
logical scheme, or comprehensive plan, or progressive outlook, 
about the educational arrangements of the federal government. 
Congressional legislation has ordinarily resulted from isolated and 
political initiative, and executive officers have resorted to expe- 
dients, both good and bad, to meet passing exigencies. It has 
never been understood that the general government had large or 
continuing educational responsibilities, and now, when it is clear 
enough that it has, the plans for meeting them are illogical and 
inadequate. 

There is excuse for the situation, but none for not mending it. 
The federal Constitution contains no mention of schools. Aside 
from a brief and barren suggestion of a national university, there 
was, so far as we know, no discussion of education in the Consti- 
tutional Convention. It was not an ignorant or obtuse convention. 
Twenty-nine of the fifty-five members were college bred, and of 
the twenty-six who were not, Washington and Franklin were two. 
Six members of the convention were clergymen. The convention 
clearly assumed that, so far as education was a function of gov- 
ernment, it was a function of the states. There were less than 
a dozen primitive colleges in the country which had been chartered 
by the king, but in each case it had been done at the instance of 
one of the colonies, and the resulting college had become the 
college of the colony and then of the state. Several of the state 
constitutions had already provided for colleges. State-supported 
systems of elementary schools had not yet been provided by law 
or established in fact, but things were beginning to move rather 
strongly, for in the next half dozen years definite and decisive 
beginnings in that direction were made. Wherever there was 
a state, the state had done and expected to do it all. Where there 
was no state, Congress felt responsibility and acted freely. Even 
before the Constitutional Convention the Continental Congress 
had, in 1785, reserved the lot no. 16, and one third of all gold, 

101 



102 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

silver, lead, and copper mines, for the maintenance of schools in 
each township which should be laid out in the Northwest Terri- 
tory. And all are familiar with the provision in the Ordinance 
of 1787 for the government of that territory, that " religion, 
morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and 
the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education 
shall forever be encouraged." So it is evident that the very definite 
and common understanding at the time of making the " more 
perfect union " must have been that the federal government had 
distinct responsibility about schools and morals in federal terri- 
tory beyond the limits of organized states, but that this function 
was reserved to the states wherever there were or whenever there 
should be organized states. 

The practice has squared with this understanding. Congress 
has often legislated upon, and federal executive officers have 
never hesitated to act upon, school matters in the territories; 
never in the states. The United States government has several 
times made gifts to education in the states, and has sometimes 
made these conditional upon certain acts by the states, but it has 
never invaded the principle that wherever there is a state the 
educational system is a state system, over which the state govern- 
ment holds the exclusive and sovereign authority. 

The United States government in 1867 created a federal Bureau 
of Education, which gathers and distributes educational infor- 
mation from and to all parts of the world, and has become a sort 
of clearing house for information concerning the schools for all 
of the states of our Union; but it has never been invested with the 
slightest authority over any matter within the limit of a state. 
The present object, however, is not to emphasize that fact so much 
as to point out that this organized and quite natural instrumentality 
of federal educational administration has never been utilized to 
meet the national responsibility for schools, recently much en- 
larged, or to propagate educational activities outside of the schools, 
in federal territory, and to inquire why. 

Let us recall the situation which has grown up. In the 
territories of Arizona, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Oklahoma there 
are superintendents of public instruction, appointed by the terri- 
torial governors. The superintendents report to the Governors, 
who are appointed by the President, and the Governors make 
occasional references to education in their reports to the Secretary 
of the Interior. There is no professional and no located respon- 



A FEDERAL EDUCATIONAL PLAN NEEDED IO3 

sibility. The Bureau of Education has nothing whatever to do 
with the matter. 

In the District of Columbia the management of the schools is 
intrusted to a board of education appointed by the judges of the 
Supreme Court of the district. This board appoints a super- 
intendent of schools. The schools are supported, one half by the 
district and one half by the United States. The Bureau of Educa- 
tion has no relation to the subject. Once, at least, when the school 
system of the district got into a muddle, the United States Com- 
missioner of Education was asked to intervene and straighten 
things out, but that was only a temporary expedient in an 
emergency. 

Congress makes annual appropriations for the schools of the 
Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole nations in 
the Indian Territory, and the Secretary of the Interior appoints 
a Superintendent of Schools for the territory; but, again, the 
Bureau of Education has nothing to do with it. 

The other Indian schools are under a superintendent appointed 
by the President, who reports to the Commissioner of Indian 
Affairs and is under the directions of the Commissioner of Indian 
Affairs and the Secretary of the Interior. The United States 
Commissioner of Education is allowed no official word concerning 
them. 

A dual administrative scheme for managing schools seems to 
be deemed necessary for Alaska. Schools for white children and 
civilized children of mixed blood are under the supervision of 
the Governor, who is ex officio Superintendent of Public Instruc- 
tion, and Congress makes appropriations for schools for natives, 
which are subject to the Secretary of the Interior and are in some 
measure, at his pleasure, committed by him to the Commissioner 
of Education. 

The Military and Naval Academies are wholly subject to the 
Secretaries of War and of the Navy, and no distinct school man 
carries the light of his guild into the recesses of their affairs. 

The educational activities of the Department of Agriculture 
have been much expanded and accelerated in recent years. 
Through appropriations to the agricultural colleges and experi- 
ment stations the federal authority has already made rather long, 
but perhaps pardonable, inroads into old-time fundamental princi- 
ples, but the Federal Bureau of Education has no word about them. 

Perhaps, above all, the war with Spain brought to the people, 
and particularly to the government, of the United States, for the 



104 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

first time, the difficult problems associated with the education of 
great numbers of unlettered people in somewhat densely settled 
territory under conditions wholly new to us. 

As to Porto Rico, Congress provided that the President should 
appoint a Commissioner of Education who supervises public in- 
struction and approves all disbursements on account thereof. The 
only function of the United States Commissioner of Education 
in this connection is that the law directs the Porto Rico Com- 
missioner to make such reports to Congress as the United States 
Commissioner requires. The obfuscation assured by legally em- 
powering an officer to define the reports which another officer 
with whom he has nothing else to do shall make to Congress is 
a novelty in legislation. 

The general direction of educational matters in the Philippine 
Islands is committed to the Secretary of Public Instruction of the 
islands, who is a member of the Philippine Commission. The 
United States Commissioner, or Bureau, of Education has not 
the slightest official relation to education in the Philippine Islands. 
All the functions exercised in the United States in that behalf 
are vested in the Bureau of Insular Affairs of the War Department. 

The educational system of Cuba was reorganized in some 
measure during our military occupancy, but it was exclusively a 
military matter. 

The reason for the lack of logical plan about all this has already 
been suggested, but what is the reason why no one in position 
to accomplish things seems to have thought of the desirability of 
correlating the growing educational work of the government and 
giving it the advantage of guidance by the Federal Bureau of 
Education ? 

It can not be because the national bureau has been in inefficient 
hands. It has never been without a highly capable and efficient 
commissioner at its head. During all of the forty years of the 
existence of the bureau the commissioner has been a man of very 
high public standing, and nearly all of that time he has been one 
of the foremost educationists of the country. For the seventeen 
years just prior to the recent appointment of Dr Elmer Ellsworth 
Brown to the office, and while our insular cares were developing, 
the commissioner has not only been a man much experienced in 
teaching and in the practical supervision of schools, but he has 
been the sanest educational philosopher and the readiest and most 
inspiring writer in the country upon the widest range of educa- 
tional themes. There were strong men in the office before Dr 



A FEDERAL EDUCATIONAL PLAN NEEDED IO5 

Harris. The present commissioner was appointed for ample rea- 
sons. The staff of the bureau has always embraced many educa- 
tional experts whose services have been widely recognized by the 
people who are best informed. The one thing needful to the 
bureau has been real school work to do. 

The government has not been studying the logic of the situation. 
It has permitted itself to be moved by inexperience, if. not sor- 
didness, and it has met exigency with makeshift. The fact that 
the makeshift was perhaps temporarily necessary ought not to be 
allowed to develop it into a permanent policy. We were all proud 
that the American regular troops could temporarily provide 
teachers for the Philippines, and it was a distinct administrative 
accomplishment to secure a thousand teachers of pretty fair gen- 
eral average, and to transport them to and get them at work 
among such a far away people, without incurring criticism of the 
details of the heavy task. But even the powerful influence and 
excellent ways of Secretary Taft, who knows much about schools, 
can not transform the atmosphere of the War Department into 
a permanent stimulant to constructive work in education. 

It is important to education in all territory over which the flag 
of the Union floats that the principle shall be firmly established 
that the spirit of the common school system bars all partizanship 
from its administration, and also that the proper organization and 
administration of the schools claim professional and expert service 
of a very distinct order. The educational system is not a thing 
upon which any party or class or sect can be allowed to uplift 
itself, and the administration of the system is not a thing to be 
held of minor importance and tossed about in divers departments 
which manage the conspicuous and imperative affairs of a great 
government. It is obviously as important that these principles 
shall be asserted in our territories and among our island peoples 
as in the already organized states. Indeed, it is much more im- 
portant in remote federal territory than in our states, because 
in such territory there is not that public sentiment which quickens 
and guides and limits official action in educational administration 
as in our states, where American feeling prevails, and institutions 
have taken form, and the philosophy of our educational system 
is understood and accepted. 

We have recently been reminded by Secretary Root that the 
states must do some things better than they are doing them, or 
the Union will have to do them from obvious necessity. The 
suggestion was timely and has attracted considerable criticism 



106 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

without much reason, for it was only equivalent to saying that 
we shall find the way for doing what the better and clearly de- 
veloped sentiment of the country deems it necessary and wise to 
do. Carlyle sums up the reasons for the failure of the Consti- 
tution of the Constituent Assembly of France in the words, " The 
Constitution would not march." The reason our Constitution has 
succeeded is in the fact that Marshall broke out roads for it and 
trained it in marching. But if it had " marched " generally as it 
has in education, it is to be feared that it would be taking a long 
and needed rest now. 

If we were to apply federal school policies to the State which 
is so proud of Mr Root, we would reduce the New York State 
Education Department to the function of getting information 
about schools when school officers are anxious to supply it, and 
to giving benevolent advice about schools when people will con- 
siderately come and listen. We would appoint superintendents 
of schools in our large cities through the mayors, and have them 
report to the Legislature through the Secretary of State, when 
they feel like it. We would annex the schools in the St Lawrence 
valley to the Agricultural Department, and those in the southern 
tier of counties to the Labor Department. And we would notify 
Long Island, stretching to the remote east and likely to be involved 
in wars over righteousness when the President comes home, that 
hereafter it will have to pay respects to the Adjutant General, and 
that its schools must begin to share supervision with the National 
Guard. In all seriousness, we would have to go back in the history 
of the State for more than fifty years, when the Secretary of 
State was Superintendent of Common Schools, and all school 
management, both local and general, was practically at one with 
politics. And no matter how far we might go back, we should 
find nothing to equal the inconsistency of having a completely 
organized, capable, and nonpartizan instrumentality for school 
administration ready at hand and refusing to use it. 

We all know how inevitably the influences which are at the 
top of an administrative organization soon bear upon appoint- 
ments therein and in time affect the conduct and shape the char- 
acter of all who are connected with it. It must be so as to federal 
schools. This is not blaming federal officers. They are entitled to 
commendation for very good administration under untoward and 
perverse circumstances. The desirability of popular control 
wherever there is the enlightenment which may safely exercise it, 
and of the association of laymen with pedagogues in the manage- 



A FEDERAL EDUCATIONAL PLAN NEEDED I07 

ment of schools, is of course recognized. Even then it is necessary 
to observe the fundamental principles which underlie our educa- 
tional policies and to effect the kind of organization and move 
upon the lines which experience has shown to be essential to 
results in administration. The business side of federal or territorial 
schools may properly enough rest with business officials, but the 
professional side ought clearly to be in the charge of professional 
men and women. The government of the United States has not 
yet got upon the correct lines of procedure in education. The 
reason is not far afield. It is found in politics and in officialism. 
Territorial governors, members of Congress, department officials, 
never wave aside any opportunity to make appointments, and 
when the occasion arises for the United States Commissioner of 
Education to contend with them about educational policies in the 
corridors and committee rooms of the national Capitol, the com- 
missioner can not bring himself to do it, and he would seem 
weak indeed if he tried. 

If the United States bureau is to be confined to statistics and 
information, it would seem better that it be not permitted to be 
regarded as an administrative or propagating instrument of the 
federal government at all. In that case it might better be com- 
pletely made up of statisticians and editors, and constituted a section 
in the Census Office. It would there have definite and undoubted 
authority to do something. 

But that is not what is needed. With a comprehensive plan, 
and concentrated administration, and actual responsibilities, the 
federal education office would attain such significance that it could 
get the attention of Congress and the country. Again, the experi- 
ence of the government in dealing with one class of schools would 
be quickly available in dealing with every other class. The govern- 
ment needs, for example, to make a serious and scientific study of 
the whole matter of adapting our philosophy and practice con- 
cerning common schools to irresponsible, dependent, non- 
Caucasian peoples, and can do it more completely and quickly 
through a unified organization in which all of the conditions and 
all of the experiences may be brought to bear upon one another. 
Yet, again, the very enlargement of the national bureau through 
bringing together the number of people who are now engaged, 
at Washington, in looking after federal schools, would bring 
together, in time, if not at once, a much stronger body of educa- 
tional experts; and it would insure for each interest, in large 
measure, the combined judgment of all. All this would develop 



108 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

a new class of educational literature which would be of service 
to all the world. There is a distinct financial loss to the school 
work which the government is trying to do, through the lack of 
comprehensive plan; and there is a distinct moral loss to the 
nation, and to education the world over, because of the freakish 
and fragmentary methods which are being employed. 

But perhaps a weightier consideration than any that has yet 
been suggested remains to be mentioned. There are needed 
educational activities outside of the schools. Libraries, study 
clubs, home study, are within the functions of democratic govern- 
ment. It is hard to set things right after they have got started 
in the wrong way. The farther they have gone in the wrong way 
the harder it is. The federal educational activities not only need 
to be related together so that they may support one another, and 
they not only need to be systematized and professionalized, but they 
need to be extended and sanely energized, made universal, and 
charged with responsibility for all manner of educational activities 
in all federal territory. 

Why should our federal Union maintain at its Capitol an 
educational office without using it? If it is to maintain such an 
office, why should it neglect and belittle it? Why should it make 
the pay of the commissioner so small and his functions so Insig- 
nificant that any man fit to speak for the nation upon education 
must suffer humiliation before he is allowed to do it? Why not 
have a definite federal educational plan, which is above partizan- 
ship, and an educational organization worthy of such a nation? 
Why longer allow education to seem to come after everything 
else in the federal scheme, when the conditions are here which 
ought to put it to the fore? Why not recognize the principles 
which are fundamental, and the policies which are fruitful, and 
the concentration which will of itself effect large and lasting ac- 
complishments in education? In a word, why does not some 
strong hand that is able to do things go about a reorganization 
at Washington which will enable the government to increase its 
educational efficiency, logically meet its responsibilities to its new 
subjects, and at the same time set a good example to all of the 
states and all of the world? And what could be more fitting than 
that the name of the President who has really accomplished so 
very much for the intellectual progress of the nation should 
forever be identified with legislation reorganizing the educational 
activities of the federal government upon a logical, effectual, and 
enduring plan? 



NATIONAL SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION 

WRITTEN FOR ENCYCLOPEDIA AMERICANA, AND REPRINTED BY 
COURTESY OF THE PUBLISHERS. 

All of the nations laying claim to any part in the civilization of 
the world sustain some kind of a system of common instruction. 
This is not only true now but it has been true as far back as history 
runs. Even the pagan nations which have consistently defied civil- 
izations have held and exemplified certain ethical principles, vari- 
ous classes of knowledge, and many interesting and expert accom- 
plishments which they have taught to their young. Some of the 
nations which we would not quickly classify as civilized maintain 
not only schools, but schools of differing grades and in some cases 
they are related together in systems of very considerable organized 
efficiency. The civilized nations have all developed, either under 
public or private control, institutions comprising school systems, 
often extending from the kindergarten to the university, and in 
many cases they have added elaborately equipped and purposeful 
educational systems going far beyond the functions of schools. The 
monarchial governments have educated a favored class more or less 
exclusively, giving but the rudiments of knowledge to the masses. 
The democratic governments have opened schools and other educa- 
tive instrumentalities more and more to all the people. We are to 
present here, in a necessarily general way, the salient features of 
these different national systems of education, and will begin with 
those of the simplest form and the least international pretentions, 
and later take up those which are more ambitious and more elabor- 
ately and expensively organized. The order of presentation, how- 
ever, must not be taken to indicate any close or deliberate arrange- 
ment of these different systems in the order of their excellence. It 
is not practicable to present all, or to present any very completely, 
and the order of arrangement is not to be taken as significant of 
merit beyond the general fact that we begin with the simpler and 
proceed to the more complex forms of organization and adminis- 
tration. 

China. China has undoubtedly maintained a system of instruction 
for the children of the higher class and propagated certain very defi- 
nite philosophical theories for thousands of years. The Imperial 
government provides a system of examinations, but leaves the train- 
ing to parents or guardians. Schools are mainly supported by pri- 

109 , J 



IIO NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

vate subscriptions. The rich employ tutors for their sons. The girls 
count for little. The conditions of the masses are hard. Some 
classes maintain clan schools for their own children. Charity- 
schools, supported by philanthropy, exist here and there. The best 
schools are conducted by the missionaries. The greater number of 
children are mainly without education. In recent years the Imperial 
government has established a university, a normal school, and a 
school of languages, and some of the provincial governments have 
opened colleges and military and naval academies. One province 
is attempting a system of graded schools. The whole school system 
is inchoate. Control by parents and filial regard for parents are 
national fetiches, regardless of the fitness of the parent for the 
exercise of control or for worship, and no duty of the state to the 
ignorant child of the masses is anywhere asserted. 

Spain. Spain has a system of primary schools. It is supported by 
local funds. The municipalities are by law charged with maintaining 
schools but the obligatory provisions do not seem to be much 
enforced. Worse than all, there is apparently but little educational 
sentiment. It seems strange that a people with such a long and, in 
some regards, an heroic history — almost conquering the world at 
one time — and a people with so much artistic feeling and so many 
polite accomplishments should have so little educational initiative. 
But it is so little that in the absence of government support and 
compulsion the schools are disjointed and often superficial. So far 
as the scheme of the educational laws goes it seems well enough, 
but it fails in the vital points of application and compulsion. Pri- 
mary instruction is divided into three classes, viz : first, instruction 
for infants between three and six years, elementary instruction be- 
tween six and nine, and superior instruction for children between 
nine and twelve. The work covers the ordinary primary subjects 
familiar in America. Some advanced schools are being developed 
and in many of the provinces there are normal schools for training 
teachers. The teachers' salaries seem to be determined somewhat 
by the size of the towns and vary from $150 to $900 per year. In 
addition to the absence of educational sentiment and initiative there 
is the no less notable absence of higher institutions to give zest and 
guidance to elementary schools. A census taken in i860 shows 
that 20 per cent of the population could read and write, that 4.6 
per cent could read only and that 73.3 per cent could neither read 
nor write; a census taken in 1889 shows that 28.5 per cent could 
read and write, that 3.4 per cent could read only, and that 68.1 
per cent could neither read nor write; the last census, taken 



NATIONAL SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION III 

in 1900, shows that out of a total population of 18,607,674 there 
were 11,869,486, or 63 per cent who could neither read nor write. 
Here is an ancient empire with history and traditions, conspicu- 
ous position and great resources, with extraordinary culture of a 
kind, and with varied refined accomplishments, and yet the masses 
are in sodden ignorance. It is not because of the lack of laws nor 
because there are no schools. It is because the laws are meaning- 
less, because of false views of life, because Spanish history, with 
all of its valor, has not made for true civilization. 

Italy. In Italy at least one lower grade school is required to be 
maintained in every commune. Communes of more than 4000 in- 
habitants must establish a high school. Classical instruction is pro- 
vided in about a thousand institutions and technical instruction in 
about 400 advanced technical schools. There are many universities, 
of more or less importance. The leading libraries and art galleries 
are extremely rich in their possessions. These institutions exert a 
very considerable influence upon the intellectual life of the kingdom, 
as they certainly do upon the culture of the world. 

Attendance upon the elementary schools seems to be enforced, 
but it does not extend beyond the ninth year. The elementary 
schools are supported by municipalities. The character of the 
schools is looked after by government school inspectors. Religious 
instruction is no longer obligatory. Many schools are supported by 
the church, in which, of course, religion is taught. There are also 
many private schools established to serve one or another special end. 
In all of these the government requirements, which are not onerous, 
have to be observed. Education is practically free up to the uni- 
versity. Illiteracy is growing less. It is now about 35 per cent and 
has decreased by about half in the present generation. There are 
many schools for special purposes, such as art, agriculture, mining, 
business methods, etc. There are 150 training schools for teachers, 
with 20,000 attendants. The government does much for musical 
training. The growth of religious toleration in the kingdom and the 
added intermingling with other peoples are clearly aiding the pro- 
gress of Italian education. 

Japan. Japan presents probably the most conspicuous illustration 
in the world of the quick formation and the rapid evolution of a 
national system of education. In 40 years the Japanese people have 
passed from a chaotic educational situation to one very definitely, 
very completely, and very systematically and philosophically organ- 
ized and administered. Where so much has been done in so short a 
time there is undue tendency to exaggerate statement and com- 



112 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

mendation, but there can be no doubt about the spirit and purpose 
and plan and determination which have accomplished so much being 
entitled to the most enthusiastic admiration and approval, even 
though we distinguish the fact that the things accomplished could 
not, in so short a time and under such conditions, come abreast of 
the educational progress of some of the older and more democratic 
nations. 

The elementary school system is practically universal, there being 
27,000 schools in 1902-3. The attendance of children between six 
and fourteen is compulsory, and the people in Japan seem to be 
in the habit of doing as the law directs. In 1902-3 the attendance 
of both boys and girls was more than 90 per cent of the school popu- 
lation. Comparing this with the situation before the Japan-China 
War of 1893-94, an increase of 33 per cent in attendance in less 
than ten years is apparent. The attendance of girls is nearly equal 
to that of boys. The number of teachers is over 90,000. The 
schools above the elementary grade seem to consist of a half dozen 
secondary schools whose function is to prepare students for the 
Imperial Universities at Tokio and Kioto, and for various art and 
industrial schools. The universities embrace faculties of law, medi- 
cine, engineering, literature, science, and agriculture. In 1903 the 
number of resident instructors in the University of Tokio was 222 
and the number of students 2880. There are many libraries and 
museums. Education seems not only to be pervasive but very inten- 
sive in Japan. The observation of other peoples by the Japanese is 
wide and keen, and they quickly adapt to their own ends whatever 
attracts their attention in other lands. The government has been 
accustomed to send the most prominent young men to European and 
American universities to be educated, but this hardly seems neces- 
sary any longer. However, the diplomatic representatives of Japan 
are exceedingly and uniformly alert in observing and reporting 
everything which may prove advantageous to the intellectual prog- 
ress of the empire, and many special commissioners are sent abroad 
to study subjects of particular interest to the educational, military, 
and industrial activities of the Empire. 

Perhaps it ought to be observed here that in Japan, as in all 
governments where the form of government is so extremely mon- 
archial and classes among the people are well denned, some educa- 
tion may be pretty nearly universal while all education is not so. 
This is much, very much, better than nothing, but it is not all. The 
system does not open the higher schools to the masses, or at least 
it does not encourage the child of the masses to seek their advan- 



NATIONAL SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION II3 

tages. So much is ordinarily true of all nations where classes are 
distinctly differentiated. But it must be said that the educational 
system of Japan has at once come to be remarkably balanced and di- 
versified. It expresses the traits and promotes the progress of a peo- 
ple with marked characteristics. The elementary part of the school 
system is not only universal but, better still, the mighty and con- 
clusive power of the government is exercised to have the elementary 
schools provide the beginnings of learning to all the children, boys 
and girls alike. Since 1900 tuition in the elementary schools has been 
free. The training of the teachers is thorough, the discipline of the 
teaching force excellent, and the supervision is close and under 
immediate government control. The methods for enforcing attend- 
ance are effective and apparently there is no thought of evasion. 
This is surely putting monarchial government to its best uses and it 
is not for us to say that such a form of government exercised for 
such ends, over such a people, is not quite as suitable as any other. 

Great Britain and Ireland. In England, Scotland, and Ireland 
we have our conspicuous illustration of a people who could set the 
limits to the power of the king, and establish government by the 
suffrage and under a constitution, without marked or general educa- 
tional progress. From the beginnings of English history a small 
number of high grade universities with a few tributary fitting schools 
have trained the sons of the nobility, while the elementary education 
of the masses has been meager, precarious, and lethargic. There 
has never been before the present generation — if indeed it may be 
said that there is now — any common school system in England. 
There have been elementary schools, upon one footing or another, 
nearly or quite everywhere, and the habit of sending children to 
school has been general, but these schools have not been under 
popular control, and they have not led up to higher institutions. 
They have lacked in self -activity, spontaneity, and aggressiveness. 
As a consequence the masses have the rudiments of learning, and 
this, with the strength and balance of the native character, means 
very much. But the fact remains that because the elementary 
schools have really had no connection with the schools above, the 
children of the masses are without educational opportunity and the 
educational system lacks in national coherency, strength, and 
elasticity. 

Why is this so among such a great people who have done so much 
for freedom and constitutionalism? No doubt the answer is found 
in the prevalence of ecclesiasticism, in the measure of control which 
the Established Church exerts over the learning of the kingdom, 



114 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

and in the stubborn opposition of churchmen to forms of educa- 
tional activity which are not at one with the fixed thought, plans, 
and ends, not of religion but of church organizations. Parliament 
has been struggling with this subject for generations. As de- 
mocracy slowly advances to larger power in the parliament house 
and as the advantages of a free and articulated school system in 
other countries, and particularly in the United States, become ob- 
vious, more and more ground is gained — but the process is a slow 
one. 

In England an act of Parliament passed in 1870 established 
school boards chosen at popular elections. The independence of 
these boards was very considerable and, therefore, their adapt- 
ability to particular conditions was marked. But by legislation in 
1902-3 the local administration of schools of all grades was given 
over to the county, or county borough, council. Again the applica- 
tion of so much unification as this implies has been relaxed by 
excepting noncounty boroughs with a population of over 10,000 and 
urban district councils with a population of over 20,000, which the 
act declares to be entitled to control their elementary education. 
In 1891 an act was passed giving to every parent the right of obtain- 
ing free elementary education for his children between the ages of 
three and fifteen and as certain schools still continue to charge fees, 
the school boards are often put to their resources and ingenuity to 
find free instruction for all who demand it. Church schools, are 
numerous. The conflict of interests between church schools and 
board schools, and between the adherents and supporters of each, 
is frequent, and the whole subject is a continuing source of acri- 
monious discussion and of unceasing educational uncertainty. 

Beyond the elementary schools there are institutions of all kinds 
and grades. There is no organized system of secondary schools. 
As of yore the fitting schools for Cambridge and Oxford continue. 
The overwhelming, if not the fatal, defect in the English school 
system has grown out of English thought and history. It is that 
the universities and preparatory schools are to serve the aristocracy, 
and that any extension of these instrumentalities to the masses will 
unsettle and unfit them for service to the aristocracy. Accordingly, 
there is not only no settled and universal school system for elemen- 
tary instruction, but there is no organic connection between such 
elementary schools as there are, and such secondary and university 
institutions as there are above them. 

But this has not interfered with, perhaps it has promoted, the 
development of business and trade and technological institutions. 



NATIONAL SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION 115 

The defeat of British industrial interests in the competitions at 
world's fairs in the present generation has undoubtedly served as 
an impetus to the progress of instruction bearing upon the nation's 
industries. 

A word as to the compulsory features of the English elementary 
school system should be said. By an act passed in 1876 attendance 
was first made compulsory and subsequent acts have made the com- 
pulsory provisions more stringent. As a general rule it is now 
obligatory for children from the age of five to the age of twelve 
to attend school, and they must attend from twelve to fourteen 
unless they are excused wholly or in part by reason of having 
passed prescribed examinations, or having attended with marked 
regularity before the age of twelve. In 1893 the attendance of blind 
and deaf children between seven and sixteen, and in 1899 tne atten- 
dance of defective and epileptic children between the same ages, 
was made compulsory. Parents and guardians are made respons- 
ible for the attendance of children within the compulsory ages and 
are fined for delinquency, and employers who give work to children 
who are bound to be in school are fined heavily. The attendance 
laws seem to be very well enforced. Illiteracy is low. Exact data 
are not obtainable. In recent years only about one man in forty 
and one woman in forty have been unable to sign their marriage 
certificates. 

No word of commendation bearing upon the historic English art 
and literary institutions, outside of the schools, which culture 
thought and give even added substance and warmer color to English 
character in general, and particularly to the classes liberally edu- 
cated, is needed here. They are many and great — a good part of 
the intellectual instrumentalities of the world. 

The Scottish school system comes nearer to that of the United 
States than that of England does. It has come down from the times 
of John Knox. It undertook to establish a school under a qual- 
ified master in every parish and made the maintenance of the 
same a charge upon the land revenues of the district. The influence 
of the Scotch Education Department upon all educational activities 
in Scotland is very considerable. This is the government depart- 
ment which administers government grants in favor of education, 
which prescribes the general lines of organization, and fixes educa- 
tional values. It acts through inspectors or others charged with 
particular duties. The primary schools are general and they seem 
more often to carry their work into what we call the secondary 
schools, than is common in England. Coeducation in all grades is 



Il6 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

common in Scotland and has been for a long time. The universities 
are strong and the Scotch character is strong. Many enter the 
universities from all walks of life. Scotch history supplies the 
reasons why democracy seems to be freer in Scotland than in Eng- 
land, and the results are obvious enough in the educational system. 
Still it must be said that the lack of organic connection — of the 
continuous road — between the elementary and the advanced insti- 
tutions is obvious enough also, and it is of much moment from the 
American point of view. 

Attendance upon the elementary schools from five to fourteen 
years of age is exacted, but some exemptions are granted after 
twelve years of age. The responsibility is placed upon the parents, 
and the penalties include both fines and imprisonment. In 1890 the 
attendance of blind or deaf mutes was made compulsory. The 
sentiment of the people combines with the efficiency of the govern- 
ment to make attendance general, and the percentage of illiteracy is 
low. 

As to education in Ireland there is not a very great deal to be 
said, but so much as may be said is exceedingly hopeful. There are 
some Americans who do not realize what great institutions and what 
fine educational instrumentalities may be found in Ireland. These 
of course appear in the principal cities and they minister to the 
higher classes. The poverty of many in the country, particularly 
in the southern part of the island, is a great hindrance to the 
universality of the elementary schools. Yet the government grants 
have become relatively liberal and the determination to enforce the 
organization of and compel attendance upon the schools has become 
decisive in the last decade. The Irish Education Act of 1892 
exacted the attendance of children over six and under fourteen 
years of age, but some exemptions are granted to certain children 
over eleven years of age. It was said with authority in 1902 that 
the compulsory provisions of the act were being satisfactorily 
enforced by committees in 131 different places. The general aver- 
age of attendance is low but steadily improving. The government 
grant for primary education in Ireland for the financial year ending 
31 March 1904 was £1,000,000 sterling. It may be said rather 
confidently that whatever work is done is as a rule very well done, 
and that the sentiment of the people touching education is steadily 
improving and highly promising. 

If this article laid any claim to being a history, or even a very 
exact description of national systems of education, it would be 
necessary to go into an examination of the British influence upon 



NATIONAL SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION 117 

the intellectual life of the colonies and dependencies of the nation. 
It would be a profitable and perhaps a fascinating study. In 
several directions, particularly in Canada, Australia, and India, it 
would have a somewhat significant bearing upon world education. 
It is obviously impossible to enter this broad field at this time. 
But it must be said that wherever the flag of Britain has been 
raised, there schools have quickly resulted, and there order and 
system have led speedily to the generation of intellectual energy 
and to the diffusion of learning. Kipling's poetic reference is not 
without sufficient reason: 

They terribly carpet the earth with dead 

And before their cannon cool 
They walk unarmed by twos and threes 

To call the living to school. 

France. There is a very completely organized and a wellnigh 
universal system of education in France. It has developed with 
marvelous rapidity since the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. It is 
hardly too much to say that it resulted from that war. -In a great 
measure it did, but other contributing causes must not be lost sight 
of. It is an autocratic and in some ways a mechanical system, but 
it is autocratic and mechanical because of the necessities of the 
situation. It is a system which knows much of the history and 
philosophy of education and which puts to its uses the courses and 
the processes which the most enlightened educationists believe to be 
of the most worth in raising the level of a nation's intellectual and 
industrial capacity. It is not free from the incumbrances and 
hindrances peculiar to the political and religious history of the 
French Republic, but it seems to be freeing itself with truly sponta- 
neous energy and elasticity, and the process has already gone so far 
that the danger of arrest or of retrogression has been practically 
eliminated. 

The educational system of France has been marked by exactness, 
and the work it does is characterized by completeness. The state 
controls all. The Minister of Education is the autocrat of all things 
in the French schools. The differentiation of schools into primary, 
secondary, and higher is not only rigid but desirable. Next to the 
minister there is a director over each of these subdivisions of the 
school system. These officers are aided by inspectors. The educa- 
tional policies result very largely from a higher council, a dignified 
body of leading educators, which meets twice a year under the 
presidency of the Minister of Education. The members of the coun- 



Il8 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

cil are appointed for four years. There are 60 members. Thirty 
are professors and representatives of the advanced schools. Six 
are chosen by officers of primary education. Four, who repre- 
sent private instruction, are appointed by the President of the Re- 
public on the recommendation of the Minister of Education. Five 
are elected by the Institut de France from its own membership. 
Nine councilors appointed by the President of the Republic and 
six designated by the Minister of Education constitute the "per- 
manent section," which meets once a week. With some appropriate 
division of authority and responsibility, these bodies lay out the 
educational plans of the Republic and exercise very decisive control 
over the satisfactory and complete enforcement of those plans. 

The teachers in the public schools must be of French birth and 
must meet the requirements fixed by law. The private schools are 
subject to government inspection and direction. A naturalized citi- 
zen may be authorized by the minister to teach in a private school, 
but the exclusion of foreigners from even the private schools seems 
severe. There are more than 100 normal schools for training teach- 
ers, which practically supply all the teachers needed, and the sys- 
tem for examining and certificating teachers is elaborate and ex- 
acting. 

The inspection of the schools is systematic and close. There are 
general and local inspectors in large numbers. The average is 
something like one inspector for 200 teachers, but by the increase 
in inspectors the number of teachers to an inspector is growing 
smaller. The inspection districts vary in size. The supervision of 
the normal and technical schools, of the manual training, and of 
gymnastics and military exercise is somewhat accentuated. 

Coming to the schools themselves, it may be said that they 
exist everywhere. They are classified about as follows: (1) 
the mothers schools for children from two to six years old, (2) the 
lower primary schools for children from six to thirteen, (3) the 
upper primary schools and complementary courses annexed to 
the lower primary schools for children who have completed the work 
in the latter schools, (4) the manual training schools, with courses 
at least three years long, which receive pupils from the primary 
schools and develop technical, aptitude, completing the instruc- 
tion of the elementary schools for pupils apparently destined for 
industrial life, (5) classes for adults and apprentices where the in- 
struction has practical reference to the trades. 

The elementary schools are free, even the books, paper, pencils, 
ink etc., being generally gratuitous. Even more, food and clothing 



NATIONAL SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION H9 

are sometimes provided. The expenditure for elementary schools 
is very large. 

The work is generally excellent. Is rests upon a philosophic basis 
and relates very decisively to the artistic tendencies which are al- 
ways liberally present in the French people, and to manual dex- 
terity. All the usual branches are well covered, with apparent em- 
phasis upon drawing, work requiring the use of tools, the house- 
hold arts, and music. Of course the outcroppings of militarism are 
often manifest. The branches which are simply culturing without 
manual labor are not neglected. The equipment of the schools, par- 
ticularly in the cities, in apparatus and implements seems to be very 
abundant, and it is said that much of this is made by the pupils. 

The aids to the life of the schools are very many. Libraries, art 
museums, musical institutions, are numbered by the thousands, and 
mutual aid societies, asylums for the unfortunate, and reform 
schools are too numerous to be treated with any detail. 

The secondary school system is apparently attaining rapid devel- 
opment, but it is yet immature. The universities are many, strong, 
and yet growing stronger. So far as the writer can see, there is 
lack of articulation between the lower and the upper schools. It 
seems to be closer between the lower and the middle schools. Cer- 
tainly the greatest emphasis is thrown upon the primary schools. 

Primary instruction is obligatory upon all children between six 
and thirteen years old, unless in a particular case a child who is 
over eleven years of age is exempted by reason of his proficiency 
duly established. The instruction may be in a public or private 
school or in the family, but apparently the fact and quality of it 
must be indubitably established. Complete lists of children are con- 
tinually maintained, and all upon the lists have to be accounted for. 
People in France are compelled to do things and they have got in 
the habit of it. Fifteen days before the opening of the school term 
the parent or guardian must notify the mayor of the commune 
whether his children of the attendance age will go to the public 
school, or to a private school, or be instructed at home. If the 
notice is not given the child is enrolled in the public school and the 
parent advised. Then the public school authorities must report on 
him. The only excuses accepted for absence are the sickness of the 
child, a death in the family, and some accidental and temporary 
break in communication. The penalties run against the parent or 
guardian, are sufficient, and the procedure is regular and as a mat- 
ter of course. The percentage of illiteracy is not unreasonable and 
is improving. It is about one in sixteen, which, in view of the 



120 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

really recent origin of the French school system as now rated, is 
not unsatisfactory. 

The criticism which will occur to an American concerning the 
school system of France will relate to its rigidity. It seems to be 
the idea that the same thing must be done everywhere, and at the 
same time, and in the same way. There is lack of allowance for 
differences in local conditions. All children seem to be put through 
the same processes. The teachers are trained under a system 
which is exactly uniform. The freedom of the universities does not 
act upon the elementary schools. There is little local color through 
local freedom in organization and administration. The people 
themselves are without the advantage of administering their own 
schools. There are doubtless some advantages and some disadvan- 
tages in this. It is not a matter of election. It is a matter of his- 
tory, of habit, of accepted understandings, and of outlook. The 
French system presents an extreme. Another extreme is presented 
in some of our American states. Very likely the golden mean is 
between the extremes. 

Switzerland. There can be no treatment of the educational sys- 
tem of Switzerland, which is both brief and exact. The country 
determined upon a universal system of primary schools nearly a 
century before England took that step. The obstacle to a brief 
description is in the fact that each of the twenty-five cantons has 
its own organization, and there is not much legislation of general 
application to the whole country. The Confederation makes free 
primary education compulsory, but leaves the limits and details to 
the cantons. The Constitution forbids the employment of children 
in factories before they are fourteen years old, with the further 
provision that in the fifteenth and sixteenth years the time given to 
work, to the " continuation schools " and to religious instruction 
shall, taken together, not exceed eleven hours per day. This is im- 
portant in view of the continuation and evening schools, at the lat- 
ter of which attendance is often compulsory. The federal Consti- 
tution also requires all boys between ten and fifteen years of age to 
be instructed in military drill and attendant exercises. 

The primary schools are nonsectarian. The different cantons 
are somewhat distinguished by differences in national descent and 
in church tendencies. Both the Evangelical-Reformed Church and 
the Roman Catholic Church are recognized by the state, but the in- 
struction in the primary schools is secular. 

There are six universities, at Basel, Zurich, Geneva, Fribourg, 
Bern, and Lausanne, with foundations from 1460 to 1832. There 



NATIONAL SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION 121 

are excellent academies at Freiburg and Neuchatel, and a strong 
polytechnic school at Zurich. The country is not at all lacking in 
libraries, art museums, and other stimulating incentives to learning. 
The different parts of the educational system seem to be correlated. 
The republican form of government gives an air of freedom to the 
whole which is not common in Europe. 

The system for insuring the attendance of all children within the 
general ages from six to sixteen, with immaterial variations in the 
different cantons, is substantial and effective. The sentiment of the 
country supports the schools with remarkable universality. Illiter- 
acy is practically unknown. Switzerland furnishes an excellent ex- 
ample to Europe of what a small republic can do for law and order 
and self -enlightenment as a people, and for individual opportunity, 
industry, and happiness. 

Netherlands. The Dutch educational system seems to have 
maintained a very uniform growth from the dark days in the latter 
part of the sixteenth century, when the nation set up not only com- 
mon schools but universities in celebration of the military victories 
over the Spanish in the first really great and prolonged war for re- 
ligious freedom, which almost unconsciously led into political free- 
dom as well. The system now embraces schools of every kind and 
grade, including good secondary, technical, and normal schools, and 
four state universities, which are ancient in origin and much re- 
garded. Since 1857, and particularly since 1878, the instruction in 
the primary schools has been undenominational. Attendance has 
been obligatory since 1900, and the people who can not read or write 
are about one in forty of the population. The expense and manage- 
ment of the schools are divided between the general and the state 
governments. Institutions bearing upon the agricultural and me- 
chanical industries are by no means lacking, and fine libraries, 
museums, and architecture, evidence, while they aid, a substantial 
and assiduous people. 

Denmark. The educational system of Denmark diffuses through- 
out the kingdom a grade of learning very well suited to such a 
people. Primary schools are common but not free, except to the 
poor. Attendance is compulsory between the ages of seven and 
fourteen. Illiteracy is almost a negligible quantity. The established 
religion is Lutheran and it embraces almost the entire people, but 
other denominations are tolerated. Denmark seems to excel in 
secondary schools. Technical and professional schools are common. 
The country is essentially agricultural, and the fact is plainly dis- 
cernible in the strong points of the educational system. At the 



122 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

head of the system stands the University of Copenhagen. The 
Royal Library at Copenhagen has 500,000 volumes and is excep- 
tionally rich in original manuscripts. There are two other public 
libraries in the city. Matters are managed very exclusively by the 
state, and the level of intelligence and thrift seems high. 

Norway. The primary school system of Norway seems to reach 
all of the people effectively. It embraces a seven year course 
suited to children from seven to fourteen years old. It is a national 
system; is free, and attendance is compulsory. The distinguishing 
feature of the elementary school system seems to be a class of 
" ambulatory schools," which are moved about from place to place 
in the thinly settled districts. Beyond the primary schools the 
towns have superior schools of all grades and kinds. There are six 
teachers seminaries. At the head of all is the Royal University at 
Christiania, founded in 181 1. The state religion is Lutheran, but all 
denominations are tolerated. 

Sweden. There is practically no illiteracy in Sweden. The 
statistics show less than one illiterate in a thousand of population, 
and so much is said to arise from a few Finns in the extreme 
north. Of the conscripts in the army in 1900, 69.8 per cent could 
read " fluently," and 30.2 per cent " fairly well." This tells the 
story of the national system of education. Probably no coun- 
try in the world gives more exact and persistent attention to educa- 
tion than Sweden is now giving. The Common School Statute of 
1897 requires at least one primary school in every district. Where 
large enough, at least two grades of instruction are maintained, 
viz, an infant school for beginners and a common school proper for 
the more advanced pupils. In the former the instruction is ar- 
ranged for two, and in the latter for four years. Attendance is, of 
course, compulsory. It must be from seven to fourteen years of 
age. The responsibility is upon parents and guardians, and the 
school board is by law bound to see that the obligation is fulfilled. 
If children are deficient of the required knowledge after passing the 
ordinary time in school, they must continue until they can meet the 
state's requirements. No obstacle — not the sickness or poverty of 
parents, not even the need of their labor to earn the family bread — 
is allowed to come in the way of every child being required to 
possess the elements of learning. If necessary, the child is given 
to the care of others and the expense forced from the parent or 
guardian. 

The state pays exceptional attention to the defectives — the deaf, 
and dumb, and blind. This training is compulsory, also. Deaf and 



NATIONAL SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION 1 23 

dumb schools are established on a large scale, and the state bears 
the expense. This extends not only to the defectives, but also to 
the disabled. 

The trend of education in the country seems toward training 
every boy and girl to read and write, to attend to household duties, 
and then to make useful things with his or her hands. The obliga- 
tory subjects of instruction are religion, the Swedish language, 
arithmetic, geometry, geography, history, natural science, drawing, 
gymnastics, gardening. The expenses are borne by national grants 
and local taxes. 

Secondary schools also form a part of the public school system, 
and a national university at Upsala exercises a very considerable 
influence upon the whole. The system is ancient, substantial, and 
comprehensive. 

Germany. For the long established, territorially extended, philo- 
sophically organized, capably directed, thoroughly accepted, and 
notably efficient, national system of education in Europe we must 
go to Germany. And if we were to undertake the exact study of 
any one system of German schools we must go to that great leader 
which embraces much more than half of the territory and popula- 
tion of the twenty-six German States which comprise the German 
Empire, established by the peace with France in 1871 — Prussia. 
This is not saying that the Prussian school system is better than any 
other in Germany; only that it is the oldest, the largest, the most 
comprehensive, and, therefore, the subject of the most interesting 
study. 

The laws of the Empire provide for primary schools in every 
city, town, and village. As a result there are something like 60,000 
of these primary schools, with 125,000 teachers and over 8,010,000 
pupils. These schools are supported by some local rates and by 
much government aid. Parents are compelled to send their children 
from six to fourteen years of age to a primary school. One of the 
strongest points in German life is the very nearly universal and 
thoroughly established habit of sending the children to school. Com- 
pulsory attendance has been in operation for sixty-three years in 
Prussia. It is much for a mighty people to assume by common un- 
derstanding that none but an imperative cause is to keep a child 
from school a single day when he ought to be there, and that 
nothing whatever is to be allowed to rob him of his right to an 
elementary education. This is apparently the case in Germany, and 
as a consequence the rate of illiteracy is diminished almost to the 
vanishing point. 



124 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

Kindergartens are common in Germany, but are ordinarily if not 
invariably carried on by private enterprise. 

" Continuation schools " are provided for the children of the 
working classes who want to do more work than is provided in the 
primary schools. They provide courses for two and three years 
and their work runs into trade instruction. 

The regulations touching primary schoolhouses in Prussia illus- 
trate the national estimate of the importance of educational details. 
Of course there are many buildings which were erected before the 
modern regulations were deemed necessary, and such regulations 
are not always enforced in Prussia, but they are quite suggestive 
enough. The building is to be erected in a sunny and dry open 
space, away from the most used streets. In the cities the interior 
of the block is preferred. Quiet is imperative. Good water is 
sought. Playgrounds are demanded. If the building has more than 
one story the youngest children have the ground floor. In building 
anew, provision must be made for enlargement. Every detail of 
construction is specifically treated. Use of new buildings is pro- 
hibited until thoroughly dry; in stone and brick buildings six 
months is allowed. The size of rooms is regulated ; even the shape 
of rooms is regarded. So, too, is the size, form, and location of 
doors and windows. Heating and ventilation are specifically 
treated. The width and length of halls and the width and height of 
stairs are specified. The form and situation of desks ; the height, 
width, and depth of the platform upon which the teacher's desk 
stands, and the need of hooks and pegs for hats and coats are all 
set forth. 

Of course a national system which regards all these small matters 
touching the school accommodations, with reference to the health, 
eyesight, and convenience of teacher and pupils, can not neglect the 
details of the courses pursued or the sufficiency of the instruction; 
and it does not. 

Secondary schools are found everywhere. Their work is varied 
but leans toward the classical, the culturing, the professional, and 
their line of cleavage is quite clearly a social one. Provision is 
made for the secondary education of girls as well as of boys. 

Then follows a large variety of advanced special schools, such 
as schools for defectives, academies of forestry, polytechnics, schools 
of agriculture, of mining, of architecture, of art, and of music. 
There are more than 250 normal schools for training teachers. 

Above all the rest there are 21 universities, some of them with 
just reputations which have attracted students from all parts of the 



NATIONAL SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION 125 

educational world. In 1900 there were 2800 teachers and 34,000 
students in these universities. 

The fundamental and distinguishing characteristics of this 
mighty system of education may perhaps be enumerated as follows : 
(a) the full and regular attendance of children of school age; (b) 
the habit of uniform obedience to the state's authority; (c) official 
exactness concerning the quantity of work to be done in each grade 
of schools; (d) uniformity in the work of each grade, with 42 to 45 
weeks of work in a year; (e) the fact that each grade of school 
leads to something beyond, to work as much as to higher schools ; 
(/) that the " something beyond " is suited to whatever manner of 
life the child is likely to lead; (g) the adequate preparation of the 
teachers, the exclusion of immature or unprepared teachers, the 
certain tenure of teachers, and the consequent dignity of the teacher 
and his work; (h) the inspection of private teaching and the as- 
sumption of entire responsibility for the education of the country 
by the government; (i) the apparently open opportunity for all, 
accompanied by a marked contentment with one's situation and a 
readiness to do what is reasonably within the reach of one's station 
in life ; (/) a very considerable evenness of educational instru- 
mentalities and opportunities in all parts of the Empire; (k) very 
many heights of scholarship which are not outranked by any in the 
world; (/) deep and common civic responsibility for the character 
of the schools. 

In the work of German schools the ordinary work in Amer- 
ican schools is included, but special emphasis is laid upon physical 
exercise and militarism, upon drawing and manual skill, upon 
needlework and other domestic arts, and upon music. Everything 
is done to nourish love for the Fatherland. The portrait of the 
Emperor is required to be displayed in every schoolroom. The 
national songs are sung often and well. The accomplishments of 
the nation are well told. Everything is done for contentment, for 
scientific scholarship, for industrial productivity, for military 
efficiency, for the happiness, oneness, strength, and greatness of the 
German Empire. 

Mention of the important fact that religion is a vital part of the 
primary school curriculum of Germany must not be omitted. 
Whether the child goes to a public school or a private school, or is 
instructed in the family, the state demands that he be instructed 
religiously. If the school be one of Protestants, Roman Catholics, 
or Jews, the master must see that the religious instruction 
conforms to the religious preferences, and whoever gives any 



126 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

instruction, including the religious, must have the authority of the 
government behind him. If the schools are mixed religiously, the 
instruction must accord with the beliefs of the greater number; 
perhaps in some cases the dogma and doctrine are somewhat 
mixed, too; more likely the religion is not so theological as some 
would make it. The clergymen are in a sense representatives of 
the state. The greater number receive a considerable part of their 
salaries directly from the state. They have been educated in the 
different grades of the schools, including the divinity schools of the 
universities, and are easily adaptable to the needs of German re- 
ligious education. 

In view of the purely nonsectarian character of American public 
schools and of the frequent discussion of religious training in this 
country, it is interesting to notice how the German law treats the 
matter. The following are among its provisions: The character 
of the religious instruction is determined by the father. Where the 
father and mother are of different denominations an agreement 
made before marriage to train the children in the religion of the 
mother has no legal effect. On the death of the father the instruc- 
tion must continue in his faith and no deathbed conversions to a 
different faith are recognized. On the death of the' father the 
court must attend to the matter. Children born out of wedlock 
must receive religious instruction in the faith of the mother. After 
fourteen years old children may decide for themselves as to the de- 
nomination they will affiliate with. Before fourteen no denomina- 
tion is allowed to receive a child or permit a confession of faith 
other than that to which the child belongs by law. 

The reader needs no assurance that a people doing so much for 
schools of every grade from the kindergarten to the university has 
accumulated many and great aids to information and culture out- 
side of the schools. We know it would be so and that it is so. 
The libraries, museums, art galleries, architecture, palaces, mauso- 
leums, and monuments of the Germans fittingly augment and round 
out their system of education, but obviously we can not enter upon 
even a partial description of them here. 

Comparisons with the United States. The extended treatment 
which has been given to various phases of the American educa- 
tional system in this department makes any general presentation of 
our own system unnecessary in this place. But I can not forbear ob- 
serving that it is clear enough that there are some advantages and 
some disadvantages with us when we come to compare ours with 
other systems. Such comparison may be hazardous, but I shall 



NATIONAL SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION 127 

venture to express the thought that in regard for details and in a 
commonly exercised and accepted power to regulate them; in the 
appreciation of the necessity of universal and regular attendance of 
all children within fixed ages ; in training for specific industries and 
common employments and in promoting contentment ; in realization 
of the bearing of the work of the advanced schools upon the lower 
ones; in providing for the philosophical and exact preparation of 
teachers ; in dignifying the teacher's position ; in fixing educational 
values and in avoiding erroneous estimates of scholarship and cul- 
ture in the affairs of the people, and particularly in determining 
the policies of the government of the nation, there are foreign sys- 
tems of education which have claims superior to the corresponding 
claims which may be made on behalf of the American system. 

On the other hand, it seems to me that in the adaptability of 
schools to agricultural, and particularly to pioneer, conditions; in 
such general inclusion of high schools, and now of state universi- 
ties in the public educational system; in the steady correlation and 
solidification which is going on between all grades and kinds of in- 
stitutions; in the continuous road from the lowest to the highest, 
and the encouragement which is given every ambitious child of the 
people to follow it; in balancing state and local control and in de- 
veloping so much and such efficient local supervision; in the cheer- 
ful generosity by which the public schools are supported, and the 
monumental munificence with which private schools are established 
and maintained ; in the fulness of religious toleration and the cor- 
diality with which all classes from all peoples are working together 
for learning; in the elasticity and flexibility of the whole system, 
the freedom of its opportunity, the aggressiveness of its spirit, the 
granduer of its outlook, and the measure of its accomplishments and 
of its confident expectancy ; in the ripeness of its scholarship at many 
points and the tendency to diffuse and absorb scholarship at all 
points ; in the growing regard for the implements and results of 
scholarship and the unlimited determination to have whatever will 
aid learning; and particularly in the popular administration of the 
system, the universal sense of proprietorship, and the retroactive 
influence of this upon the buoyant intellectual and moral sense of 
the nation, we have educational advantages which are enjoyed by 
hardly any other people. 



WHAT THE WOMEN'S CLUBS MAY DO FOR THE 

SCHOOLS 

ADDRESS AT THE STATE FEDERATION OF WOMEN'S CLUBS, TROY, N. Y., 

OCTOBER 30, I907 

I shall use no part of my brief time in the commonplace pleasant- 
ries which easily come to the surface when a man speaks of or to the 
Women's Clubs. I look upon you as the representatives of sub- 
stantial women, who have organized for intellectual self -improve- 
ment, and are anxious to be useful to the towns in which you live 
and to the State of which you are justly proud. Your committee 
has asked me to tell you what an educational officer of the State 
thinks you can do for the schools. Most of you have attended the 
schools; many of you have children who have been, or are, or are 
to be, in the schools ; and all of you know how vital the schools are 
to the town and to the State. Not doubting, therefore, the sincerity 
or the intelligence of your request, and well knowing how very 
potent your well directed efforts may be, I respond to your invitation 
with very great pleasure and shall endeavor to aid you with all plain- 
ness of speech. 

In the first place, do not lose sight of the fact that all public under- 
takings in which both sexes are concerned will be better managed 
through the cooperation of both men and women. Their qualities 
supplement each other. If school boards were to be made up 
exclusively of women they would be no better than when composed 
exclusively of men, and probably, in general, not as good; for 
women are not, upon the average, as well adapted to public ad- 
ministration as men, and experience shows that after the novelty of 
the first admission of women to such boards wears off, the women 
who are less adapted to such places seek and secure places upon 
them. I have no objections to women in school boards, and there 
are many women whom I should much prefer to many of the men 
who are in such places, but it would be a false pretense, of which I 
should be ashamed, if I should tell you that you could help the 
schools by contesting elections and insisting upon sharing the re- 
sponsibilities and the publicity often incident to membership in ad- 
ministrative boards. If you will use your influence to secure the 
election or appointment of decent and capable men on school boards, 
and if you will insist that boards, however composed, shall honestly 

128 



WHAT WOMEN'S CLUBS MAY DO FOR THE SCHOOLS 120, 

and completely perform their duties, you will accomplish more than 
you will by contending for the election or appointment of women 
thereto. 

School boards often require prompting, and even insistence, from 
the outside about things which will need to be done. Public 
officials find it very easy to perform duties to which no one objects. 
It is very comfortable to receive the honors of a position without 
undertaking the things which require time, exactness, knowledge of 
the law, and courage, and which stir opposition and acrimony. 
There are not many vicious boards of education, but there are a 
great many which need to be told of things that need to be done, 
and ought to be called to account for leaving them undone. 

The temperaments, tastes, and experiences of women lead them, 
very often, to see those things more clearly than men do. They can 
be exceedingly helpful in getting them done if they will go about it 
rightly. This is often so, law or no law : it is certainly so if the law 
intends that the thing be done. 

All schoolhouses should be clean and sanitary, well lighted and 
ventilated. The housekeeping standards of women are higher than 
those of men, but none too high. You may be assured that what- 
ever you may do to have and to keep the schoolhouses of your town 
clean and decent will be appreciated. If they are not so, put it up to 
the trustee or the board of education bluntly and publicly; and if 
you get no relief, publish your complaint in the newspapers : and if 
the appeal to local sentiment fails, write the Education Department 
to the end that an inspection may be ordered and such- directions 
given as may be necessary. 

Without any law or any official action you may hang pictures in 
the schoolroom and do many other things to make it attractive, 
warm the soul of the teacher, and cultivate the tastes of the children. 

The law requires that every child under fourteen years old, and 
every child between fourteen and sixteen who is not at work, shall 
be in school whenever the public schools are in session. The trus- 
tees and boards of education are required to know of all such chil- 
dren in their districts and towns and to see that they are in school. 
Nothing, not even poverty, or the need of the labor of the child, or 
the wishes of the parents, is allowed by the law to deprive the child 
of an elementary education. Yet many a child is being kept from it. 
The percentage of illiteracy in the State of New York is many times 
greater than in Britain, or France, or the German Empire, or Swit- 
zerland, or Scandinavia, or Japan. Anything that you will do to 
support or force school officers to exact the complete attendance of 



I30 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

all children of school age will be a substantial public service. If 
they refuse after their attention is called to a specific case, you may 
be sure of help from the Attendance Division of the State Depart- 
ment. 

You may help the elementary schools, at least, by opposing any 
more additions to their work before something is taken out. They 
are overloaded. I am not saying that the schools have been wrong 
in responding to our complex, present day life, but I have no 
hesitancy in saying that one enthusiast after another has added some- 
thing to the work of the schools until, too often, we do not do what 
we undertake to do as well as it ought to be done ; and yet the chil- 
dren are permitted to think that they know more than their parents 
do, when they are wholly without absolute knowledge and wholly 
unable to do anything with exactness. If you will resist further de- 
mands upon the lower schools and insist that their work be simplified 
and drilled in more deeply, you will aid in training boys and girls 
for more easily doing the work of the upper schools, or for earning 
a living if they do not go to the upper schools at all. 

You may help great numbers of children, and your country as 
well, if you will join in a movement to overthrow the prevalent idea 
that success in life depends upon being lawyers, or doctors, or 
dentists, or engineers, or captains of something or other ; if you will 
lead them to know that the greater part of them will be more useful 
and happy through working with their hands ; and if you will aid in 
providing public schools, following right after the elementary 
schools, where the skilled vocations are made a reasonable offset for 
the literary, scientific, and professional work of the public high 
schools and of the colleges and universities. 

You may help the schools by helping the teachers. You may help 
the teachers by being considerate and by sympathetic conference, 
quite as much as by criticism or by exacting special attentions which 
they can not give. The teachers of the elementary schools are all 
women, and are in nearly every case conscientious, often overcon- 
scientious. You will give them help and get help from them by 
inviting them into your clubs and by showing them the social atten- 
tions which they well deserve. Educational exactions which have 
been put upon them for twenty years, and the innumerable other 
vocations which have opened to women, have combined to make 
legally qualified teachers scarce. Yet the pay is small, often much 
too small, for the service rendered and the present day cost of living. 
Teachers ought not to be left to the necessity of asking or agitating 
for the support which is imperative to decent living. You may help 



WHAT WOMEN'S CLUBS MAY DO FOR THE SCHOOLS I3I 

the teachers and help the schools by standing for such advance of 
salaries as will respond to the reasonable demands of the situation. 

You may aid the schools by assuming, and if necessary by insist- 
ing, that no man who is not a gentleman and no woman who is not a 
gentlewoman has any right to have anything to do with managing or 
teaching in them. You will not be wrong if you reason that the men 
and women of the schools ought to have the qualities that will appeal 
to the better feelings and command the respect of the people ; and 
you will be doubly right if you insist that people who can not appre- 
ciate the good qualities of a teacher shall not be allowed to humiliate 
a teacher because she is moved by the gentility which is vital to the 
schools. 

I make no mistake when I say that the teachers want the help of 
womanly women, and the school system will welcome the coopera- 
tion of women's organizations. Yet I must remind you that every 
public school is only one unit of a general system of education ; that 
its character and procedure can not be easily changed ; and that you 
must be pretty well acquainted with the history and philosophy of 
that system, you must enter into its experiences and share in its pur- 
poses, before you can hope to be of substantial service in reshaping 
and recasting it for the better. On the other hand, let me say that 
if you do know that history and philosophy, if you have had experi- 
ence, if you do know the difficulties, and if you are moved by 
rational impulses, there is no reason whatever why you should not 
take an aggressive course in making the schools better than they 
are; and even if some cherished cups and saucers should be broken 
there would be no permanent reason for crying about it. 

You will not misunderstand me, I am sure, if I tell you that both 
men and women are needed in the schools, above the elementary 
grades at least, and you will be wisely aiding the educational system 
if you withhold your influence from any movement calculated to 
lessen the number of men who are teaching. The number is already 
much too small and it would be to the advantage of the schools if it 
could be much enlarged. 

You may help the schools by insisting that they shall never be a 
football of politics. The man who makes political patronage of ap- 
pointments in the schools is, perhaps ignorantly but none the less 
effectually, an enemy of the schools and a curse to the people. 

If you are specially interested in the public schools you may help 
them by a friendly attitude towards the private schools. :If you 
have alliance with the private schools, you may aid them through 
cordial relations with the public schools. We ought to know by 






132 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

this time that no kinds of schools can thrive through a management 
which is narrow, exclusive, conceited or mean. Meanness defeats 
itself generally: it does with entire certainty in education. If you 
are specially concerned about one grade of school, — whether it be a 
primary school, a secondary school, a college, a professional school, 
or a university, you will serve it best by knowing the work and 
cultivating the acquaintance of all other schools. The educational 
system is knitted together and the strength of each of the parts de- 
pends upon the relations which it sustains to all the rest. 

I take the opportunity of saying that the State Education Depart- 
ment will be glad to be of all practicable assistance to the Women's 
Clubs. Remember I was obliged to use the qualifying adjective 
practicable. There is more that we can not do than that we can. 
But we may do something through our traveling libraries, and 
through our standard pictures, and through our facilities for afford- 
ing information. Very possibly we may be of service to you about 
many intellectual movements not related to the schools, but it is more 
than likely we may aid you in any rational efforts which you may 
make for the betterment of the schools. 

In a word, I look with much satisfaction upon the expression of 
the purpose of your organizations to be the protectors and helpers of 
the schools. They are at the very center of your natural field. Be 
not afraid. Avoid sudden impulse. Look upon all sides. Be as 
judicial as a woman can. In any event, keep going ahead. It is not 
in you or such organizations as yours to do much harm. It is in 
you to do great good. Be assured of my wish to act in cordial and 
mutually helpful cooperation with you, and also of my appreciation 
of the courtesy which affords the opportunity to say so. 



LEJL'i 



